Vikar’s Rant

The saddest instance I can remember was that in March 2001 when the “storm of the century” was predicted. I remember that one as well. I left a perfectly good St. Patrick’s Day party in Staten Island to try to beat the storm. And let me tell you, I drove through the “storm of the century”. I got home to Freehold and I watched the snow fall as it failed to cover the height of the grass. It was pathetic. Every weather forecaster got it wrong except for Alan Casper on NJ 101.5, who said that he didn’t think it was going to be bad at all. And the one thing I can definitely tell you was that the stores were free of milk, eggs, and [...]

I find Robitussin D with a twist of lemon Theraflu to be the choice of champions. One shot of that, equivalent to two teaspoons, after a piping hot mug of lemon Theraflu with a drop of honey can really make your fever enhanced halucinations really entertaining. I take this in an easy chair with my least favorite flannel pajamas and let the good times roll. It beats daytime television and you don’t even need a remote [...]

I live a stone’s throw from the Freehold Raceway Mall, Target, The Wiz, Bob’s Sports, CompUSA, and (my favorite) Barnes & Noble. Every year it’s the same thing. People forget how to drive for the entire month of December. All of those people are now driving near me. In the month of December, just getting in a car can be an adventure. However, I’ll overlook the fact that every car’s signaling system seems to short out all at the same time and that all of their rear view mirrors are not working in exchange for a parking space anywhere within walking distance of a [...]

The first mistake I made was to read the document while I was medicated with Vicodin. This was a precautionary step from my surgeon to take care of any pain I might have while I heal from the operation. I realized that no matter how much coffee I drank and how much studying I did I would always have the comprehension ability of the average Joe listening to the “Peanut’s” teacher talk to Charlie Brown (Waw WA WA waw WA waw waw). Vicodin and concentration don’t [...]

Picture this if you will. It’s 1990. A twenty-four year old new hire who defined “party” as something seen in the first ten minutes of the movie, Animal House, goes to his first office party. He is surrounded by coworkers, roughly his age and experience, including his roommate whom he’d gone to college with*. Mix with that a band of stuffy, old school, financial / technical managers. The place: Hot Rods Dance Club - downtown [...]

Samhain (pronounced sow-en or sav-in) comes from the old Irish for “summers end” or, according to some sources, “November”. To the ancient Irish, there were two seasons - Summer and Winter. In agricultural soccieties, winter could be a very scary time indeed. If there were not enough provisions stored families could starve to death. So, throughout the summer, crops were tended, were harvested, sold and stored for later use. Samhain was the last great harvest. [...]

However, with all that aside, I did watch an abnormal amount of television. I would get home from school and watch TV immediately. This was bad. I would watch TV until about 8:PM, do my homework, and come back downstairs and watch some more until I had to go to bed. My parents actually owned one of the first pilot VCR’s back in 1978. It never really occurred to my parents to actually turn off the TV. Especially when they were getting comments from parent/teacher conferences that I had problems paying attention in class and “lacked self control” (Pay attention, kiddies, these are all symptoms of Attention Deficit [...]

While the fishing stuff was a good idea, my wife, the animal rights activist, did not feel comfortable contributing money to a manufacturer of fish death. My immediate, and to some extent correct, reaction was, “Fine, put it down and let’s get out of here.” No, no, that would have been waaaay too easy. She wanted me to pay for it. There’s one thing about going along with nonsense, it’s another thing having to finance it. [...]

I wasn’t worried about the two cats or the three kittens. I certainly wasn’t worried about our Pomeranian or the Border Collie. Plus, as my body is comparable to the wild man of Borneo with layers of blubber that would be the envy of most Eskimos, I thought I could rough it. My wife could wear a sweater and put on an extra [...]