Introducing the best pitcher in the world - Johan Santana.

The Mets held a press conference today to officially introduce Santana to the press and their fans. That hat sure looks good on him.

Yankee Fans - Feel free to stop by Shea Stadium some time this year to check out an upper echelon pitcher who isn’t under the scrutiny of the United States Congress.

Greetings all, I hope you are having a better Saturday than I am. I woke up this morning free and clear of any responsibilities. No work, no pressing errands, and no Angry Romanian related deadlines or duties. Not a worry in the world. Until, that is, Time Warner ruined my day.

You see, Ruko was scheduled to post a Pulitzer Prize worthy article today on the quality of discourse in today’s global village as it relates to the social phenomenon called the internet. Unfortunately that discourse was silenced by Time Warner’s inability to reliably provide internet connectivity to the entire eastern half of a metropolitan area of one million (say this with pinkie to corner of mouth) people. ETA for recovery of service - unknown. Ability to speak to a real human being at Time Warner - fat fucking chance. Desire to send army of sharks with frickin’ laser beams to destroy Time Warner headquarters - overwhelming.

Ruko couldn’t post his article this morning and is now stuck at work. So here I am, lurking around my place of work, the only place I know that uses the crappy DSL service offered by the crappy local phone company, posting this message. So enjoy these two videos featuring a few of the best unscripted/embarrassing moments in the history of college football commentary, and look for Ruko’s post whenever Time Warner pulls that fucking road runner out of it’s ass and my router starts blinking green again in that oh so reassuring way.

Credit to Ruko for providing the videos

Thats a little gay

Britney Spears

If I was carrying a firearm today you would have heard about me on the national news tonight. I like to think of myself as a laid back, non aggressive sort. Kind of the yin to Ruko’s yang. But today I had a David Banner moment. Only a few things really push me over the edge. I’m not a grammar freak. I don’t road rage all that often. I don’t even mix it up that much with my wife. (Probably because I know I’d lose) But today I totally lost it.

I was standing in line to purchase a Mountain Dew Code Red at Wilson Farms. Wilson Farms is a chain of convenience stores that shelve anything you need, as long as what you need is cigarettes, Philly Blunts, beer, beef jerky, soda, Red Bull, and/or lottery tickets. It is the final item on this list that almost sent me into a homicidal rage.

First, let me say that I don’t think all people that play lotto are complete morons. I must admit I play the occasional scratch off, but nothing that would actually require me to choose numbers and check them later. If I play a scratch off I assume I will lose, and I am pleasantly surprised when I win. As for the people that play constantly, with the assumption that they will someday be sipping margaritas on their own private island, these people are retards and should be systematically thinned from the herd.

Several excellent heard thinning candidates stood between me and paying for my Code Red at Wilson Farms this afternoon. The guy at the counter was holding a telephone book thick stack of lotto tickets for the clerk to scan, handing them to him one by one. At this point I was mildly annoyed, but not pissed off by any estimate. My heart began to beat a little faster and my face reddened just a shade when the clerk called to the back for help and the reply was, “yo son, I’m talkin’ to my girl.” But still I kept my calm; it was my day off and I wasn’t in a rush.

Next came the straw that broke the camel’s back. The homeless Vietnam veteran look alike at the counter apparently was short a few bucks. Seems the easiest option, canceling the last few tickets, was unacceptable to Mr. no teeth, camouflage jacket, lotto addict. From his back pocket came a tattered, filthy piece of paper that looked like an archaeologist had pulled it out of King Tut’s mummified asshole. Thus began the labored process of selecting the numbers he wanted to cancel. Apparently this mathematical genius had a system.

I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. So I say to the guy in front of me, loud enough for everyone, even the 75 pound little Puerto Rican ferret on the phone with his hood rat girlfriend, to hear, “Maybe he should kill the whole deal and put a down payment on a haircut and a stick of old spice.” To which I added, “Fuck, I hate these lotto assholes.”

Now I should have guessed, by the fact that the guy I was addressing was wearing a Buffalo Bills coat (dirty as a prostitute’s ass, may I add), that he was in possession of no common sense, and therefore a prime candidate to play the lotto. Not to mention the stack of lotto tickets in his right hand. Long story short - he was pissed, but at that point I did not give a flying fuck. I yelled to Rico fucking Suave in the back, “How ‘bout ringing up some customers who aren’t pissing away their rent money on lotto. ”

“You betta check yoself son”, came the reply.

At this point everyone was staring at me. The Bills guy was talking shit about me to the loser at the counter. The wannabe thug on the phone was telling his girl he was about to go out and kick my ass, and the clerk at the counter looked like a deer about five seconds from becoming one with the grill of an oncoming Freightliner. So I did the most mature and level headed thing possible; I shook the piss out of my Code Red, tore off the cap, and lobbed it over the counter like I was Chuck Norris killing zipperheads in Missing In Action. (I, II, or III) I then stormed out of the place, got in my car, and drove off, not forgetting to flip the bird to the crowd of idiots pouring out of the store to watch me leave.

My next move was crucial; instead of heading to a gun shop to apply for a handgun permit I swung by the wholesale club to buy a case of Code Red. I certainly wasn’t going to pick them up at my friendly neighborhood Wilson Farms store anytime soon.

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. This may sound cliché, but it’s true. I have been sick going on two weeks and I just might snap. (or die, one or the other) I’m also sick and tired of this sorry assed health care system we are all forced to endure. Service, value and satisfaction are atrocious at every level of this system. Let me walk you through my recent experience as a demonstration of this statement. By the end, hopefully you will be as angry as me; ready to start running BMW’s off the road and choke slamming people at the pharmacy.

Let’s start with the doctors:

These overpaid pricks don’t listen to a damn word you say. They simply fill out prescriptions and nod their heads as you tell them your tale of sorrow. After you have finished speaking your doctor will check his watch, tell you he hopes you feel better, and hand you a prescription or two as he rushes off to his next appointment. I’m glad I paid a co-pay, not to mention my astronomical health insurance premium, to be treated like a nuisance. If I was looking for that kind of shit I would have taken my $20 bill to a high-end titty bar.

Next stop: the pharmacy.

I approach the pharmacy counter with two prescriptions in hand. Under the counter is a really slick sign portraying a friendly, wizened old white guy, personally handing over a prescription to an elderly customer. This particular pharmacy’s slogan is, “With Us, It’s Personal.” Sounds comforting, right? Not so fast! Seems they mean, “With Us, It’s Personal” in a guido, dagoish, mafia sort of way. You know, the old, “Tony, it’s not personal, it’s all business - capisce?” Followed by the speaker putting 47 rounds, in a very businesslike manner, into Tony. Except with this drug store someone must have pissed them off enough so that they have moved right past business to a personal sort of vendetta against the customer. I stroll up to the counter and a charming young woman with enough tattoos to put the average NBA power forward to shame stares at me. There is no “hello”, or “can I help you”, just a threatening stare. I hand her the prescriptions. She throws them on a pile and she says, “three hours”. Looming over her shoulder is a corporate poster proclaiming, “Most prescriptions filled while you wait”. I guess this is a somewhat subjective policy so I decided not to challenge the angry, work-release, tattooed pharmacy troll on it.

Three hours later a less intimidating but equally unfriendly women informs me my bill is $148. Long story short, the doctor wrote both prescriptions for name brands. More than likely some scum sucking, bottom feeding, piece of shit drug rep was behind this horseshit. After an excruciating two step with my doctor’s voice prompt system I managed to have the generic prescription faxed over and finally was on my way home, in the dark, sick and pissed off.

Why am I telling you all this? In case you hadn’t noticed, the word “angry” appears in the name of the website, and I am mighty pissed off. It’s over week later and I feel as bad as I did a week ago. So, keep an eye out for the next installment of this series as I rant about the Hospital, the ICU, and the bedside administration of last rights, as my health and well being steadily deteriorate as I attempt to navigate through our profit based, patient unfriendly health care system.

Analytics is the best, or so I thought. What better web tracking tool is out there? With only a few clicks I can survey key stats like visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, and geographical location of visitors. Also available is useless minutia like visitor connection speed, screen resolution and browser used. (It’s hard to believe 42.18% of you weenies still use Internet Explorer)
Frankly, I’ve become somewhat addicted to Analytics, staring like a zombie at my screen, hoping the wealth of data at my disposal will somehow unlock the secrets of how to lure millions of readers to our Angry Romanian world.
Surely, I reasoned, there is a large demographic out there looking for our brand of witty humor with a sophomoric twist. Already we have grown from a site that no one outside of our little clique read to an entity that attracts hundreds of readers a day from around the world. I assumed that our ever increasing popularity derived from the quality of our content and from word-of-mouth.
Unfortunately, Analytics has ruined all of this, thanks to a handy report called keywords. The keyword report lets you know what your readers typed into their browser to reach your site. Sounds pretty innocuous, right? Wrong! I’ve now come to realize that the web is nothing but a enabler for greasy handed googlers to get their groove on. Sorry about the alliteration, but it’s true. Here is but a sampling of the keywords used to reach our site:
romanian whore
butt sex
romanian pornstars
romanian porn
nasty girl sex
hand fucking (hand release - I like!!)
pork sex (no Jews allowed)
“girl on girl”
“hot lesbian porn”
“my first time” “going to fit” “he was” (This is apparently porn for Yoda)
‘anal seepage’ (Yummy)
are romanian men nice (no!!!)
child horny rape
chuck norris phedophile (duh!)
dog licking peanut butter off penis (no comment)
fuck 12 yrs old child xxx (I bet this guy is a hit at kids birthday parties)

The list goes on and on, but I’m sure you get the point by now. And although these kind of keywords only represent a small fraction of our traffic, it proves, nonetheless, that the world is a scary place. At least for 12 year old Romanian, girl on girl, hand fucking, anal seepage, butt sex, whores!!!

Although we, the editors of Angry Romanian, usually deal in lighthearted misogyny, racism, and scatological humor, I have decided to take a moment to give you all some serious advice. I spent ten long years working in consumer electronics. I’ve sold computers, audio equipment, televisions, and appliances. In addition to selling all that landfill fodder I have also managed the little twerps at these stores you have grown to hate. Rarely will you get the honest, inside scoop like this - so listen up shit heads!! Here is a list of eight very good reasons you should never, ever buy an extended warranty on consumer electronics.

1. The Salesperson - There are several very good reasons the salesperson at your local BestBuy, Circuit City, or Fry’s has for selling you a warranty. All of these reasons revolve around him, not you. He is either paid a commission for selling you the warranty; under extreme duress from his manager to sell you the warranty, or involved in a contest to see who can extort the most warranty dollars from the sheep. (that’s you - the stupid customers) At Christmas time all three of the above criteria are likely true. Your salesperson will tell ANYTHING to sell you a warranty. On site? - yep; 24 hour turnaround? - sure; new parts? - of course; three years begins after the manufacturers warranty? - sounds good. Trust me - I’ve made a ton of cash selling extended service plans in my lifetime. The lying comes naturally. Part of this is your fault - retail salespeople grow to hate the general buying public pretty quick, and therefore their propensity to lie to you grows exponentially. If you weren’t such a filthy pack of advertising driven zombie lunatics consumer electronics retailers might not have to depend on warranty sales for profits.

2. The Sales Manager - I made a lot of money doing this job. One year I maximized on my warranty bonus structure and received a $7500 check for my trouble. This was on top of the monthly bonus money I received. A good sales manager is willing to put an incredible amount of mental and sometimes physical pressure on his minions to sell warranties. I had a policy that the highest TAP (that’s what we called it at CompUSA) salesperson got to leave with the last customer. The rest had to stay and move boxes and dust laptops. The two lowest performers had to pull printers and monitors from overstock. Again, there are no boundaries a driven sales manager will not cross to make his numbers. Back in the middle ages of computer retail (the late 90’s) the internet wasn’t as useful as it is now, and customers were defiantly not as savvy in using it. Most shoppers did not check out prices online before they came into the store. I would mark up all the desktop computers $100 and all the laptops $200. My salespeople would use the “bump” to sell warranties. “I know you say you don’t want the $400 laptop warranty but what if I knock $100 off?” “No you say? How about $200 off?” Boy we fucked a lot of people like that.

3. The General Manager - Same as the Sales Manager just an older guy.

4. The Regional Manager - Same as the General Manager except the death threats and insults come from another city via conference call.

(more…)

You can’t ignore the headlines. It seems as if almost every day there is a new incident involving the police and the use of stun guns. A simple google search provided ample evidence that tasering has become a serious national issue. Go to YouTube and you can view dozens of incidents, most of them involving campus security personnel.

There are two types of campus security -

1. Real Campus Police - They carry guns and can arrest your drunken ass. From my experience these guys are pretty level headed and calm. They can shoot students who pose a deadly threat and therefore that sort of threat nearly never arises. For every other situation they depend on their reasoning skills to navigate the various situations they encounter.

2. Campus Security guards- by definition these guys are nothing but a pack of pussies who failed the police entrance exam and are forced to play babysitter to rich kids who will soon be out-earning then 10 to 1. Campus security guards are notorious for harassing students for silly shit and reveling in the harrowing task of writing parking tickets. An exception to this exists on campuses that offer a criminal justice program. Guards at these schools are typically in the program and take their job seriously as it is a stepping stone toward a career.

I would like to make the argument that taser guns should not be given to either group.

Campus Police already carry a gun for extreme situations. However, just the presence of their firearm earns them a level of respect that ought to give them the upper hand in most situations. Giving these guys stun guns will only make them lazy. Instead of using their conflict resolution skills they will simply stun drunk students that give them a hard time. Although this makes for great YouTube material, students should not be subjected to 80,000 watts for asking a cop “hey don’t you have a Dunkin Donuts to protect piggy?”. Nor should a taser be an acceptable alternative method to dragging a drunken frat boy from a car that he was driving in reverse at 40 miles per hour across the provost’s front lawn.

Campus security guards should also never be issued stun guns. These bitter hacks have survived for decades with walkie-talkies and mag-lights as their only weapon. The last thing a college campus needs is a bunch of over-caffeinated police academy dropouts carrying “non lethal” stun guns that are responsible for at least 147 deaths in the United States since 2000. These bozos should stick to writing parking tickets and call the real police for everything else.

Before you give me the old “we live in increasingly dangerous times” lecture let me expose the proliferation of stun guns for what it is - a profit making crusade by stun gun manufacturers. They rushed these things to market before properly testing them and now people are dying. I think it is about time the police went back to the good old days of beating people and leave the high tech gadgets to the harmless nerds and geeks of our society.

In the misspent Halloweens of my youth many pumpkins were smashed, windows soaped, and bags of candy snatched. There were several basic techniques involved in stealing the candy of little ghosts, goblins, and princesses. These included the snatch and bolt, the slit bag, and the straight forward “hey you little turd, give me your candy or else” trick. In my neighborhood it was survival of the fittest, fastest, and most importantly, survival of the friends of Kurt Wallace, a sixth grader with a beard, size 13 Jordan’s, and standardized test scores that could single handily lose any elementary school their No Child Left Behind subsidies. Alas, the coming of age ritual of snatching candy bags has been co-opted by George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their neo-conservative operatives.

The process of snatching the candy from small children has taken a sinister and hi-tech turn. Warentless wiretaps of the homes of subversive children have revealed the planning of pagan Halloween rituals. Here is the transcript of one such conspiratorial conversation:

Tommy: Hey Jimmy, my mom is bringing me and my sister over to your house at six to go trick-or-treating.

Jimmy: Do we have to bring your sister; she’s such a pain in the ass.

Tommy: Yeah, but we can ditch her like last year.

Jimmy: Nice, see you at six.

Once an obvious terrorist islamofascist plot like this is revealed the Department of Homeland Security leaps to action – intent on depriving these Taliban sympathizers the spoils of their plot. At 6:15 a black SUV follows Jimmy and Tommy as they collect their bounty. At 7:37, with candy bags bulging, the terrorists head for home, when suddenly five heavily armed Blackwater operatives burst from the SUV, grab the boys, and speed off. Tommy and Jimmy are handcuffed, blindfolded, and taken to an Air Force base. Their candy is confiscated, but this is not enough in these dangerous times.

The boys are flown to a secret prison in Romania where they are stripped of there clothes and forced to watch reruns of teletubbies until they are babbling mindlessly like, like – ah – well - teletubbies.

Meanwhile, back in the United States Jimmy and Tommy’s parents are in a state of panic. Local authorities are directed by the NSA not to waste their time searching for the boys, but will say no more. The parents are confronted with the fact that with the repeal of habeas corpus, their children could be anywhere, could have been seized by any number of government agencies, and they are left with no recourse.

In Romania, White House approved “soft” interrogation tactics reveal Jimmy and Tommy are part of an operation much larger than the extorting of candy from local residents and funneling of the proceeds to Syrian terrorist camps. After six hours of waterboarding, Tommy admits that he is in-fact the owner of the Willy Wonka chocolate factory, and has indoctrinated over 200 oompa-loompa’s . Jimmy, after losing seven toenails, three fingertips, and his left ear, added that he and Tommy had conspired with Gene Wilder, the factories original owner, in converting the factory to an IED production facility.

For these crimes the boys are tried before an impromptu military tribunal, and sentenced to death by Blackwater target shooting.

Three weeks later their bodies wash up in the Tigris River, missing their jawbones and fingers, making any attempt to identify them impossible. Not that anyone would care anyways since they were assumed to be Iraqis.

Back home the boys’ disappearance is attributed, by Fox News, to Hillary Clinton’s proposed health care plan. Gene Wilder and all the Baldwin brothers are sent to Gitmo for reprogramming, and the alleged downtown San Francisco site of the Willy Wonka munitions factory is nuked.

Happy Halloween !!!