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Tv’s New Hit

TV will rot your brain..if your lucky.By: Sean Millski

Has anyone else seen that the news is suddenly full of stories about kids being hit and killed by…..Televisions!?  The first Delaware Valley incident that caught my attention was earlier this week in Kensington, That resulted in only an injury, the second, yesterday in Burlington county new jersey resulted in the death of a two and half year old boy! In doing a little research I found this is not at all uncommon. Every major city in the country reports many such instances every year. For example; Last November in Florida a 16mo old boy was killed when an older sibling climbed a 4ft tall TV to turn it off and ended up toppling it over onto his infant brother. Almost the exact same thing happened in Phoenix,Az. 3 times in as many months!

Even though I immediately started to suspect a combination of poor parenting and the trend towards huge TV’s (even though the one in Jersey yesterday was only 27″), as it turns out the vast majority of cases I looked into the police have put the blame on faulty TV stands and not the TV’s or parents. Which begs the question… What is with the problem with the TV stands!? Are people not putting them together properly , are the little plastic discs under a modern TV too small to support the weight or are the crappy fiber-board stands sold today too cheap to even be safe in your home!? If your thinking ” Whew, I’m safe ’cause I used a cool wall mount” you’d be wrong because in a few instances it was a faulty wall mount or installation of the mount  that caused the TV to fall. So unless your Builder Bob your not safe there either.

I could be way off here but we didn’t seem to have this problem years ago, even with the 2 ton sets we grew up with because furniture was made by a craftsmen, came assembled already and making a quality product was still job one.  Of course the old school TV’s came already in a  sturdy, balanced stand but even the hulking sets of the 80’s and 90’s were supported by real, honest to goodness furniture. I think this just another case of the increasingly ignorant consumer being screwed by the man at price-mart.

Maybe the lesson is to put out the three or four dollars for one of those furniture securement kits to keep your children, pets and property safe?

I don’t know what the answer is but maybe before you have the family over for the holidays you should take a second and make sure your TV is securely mounted to the wall or get those chinese directions out and give your realistic looking, veneered wood TV stand the once over.

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The Post Office

Will Cliff Claven lose his Job?
Will Cliff Claven lose his Job?

By: Billy BeerSlugger

You know I’ve had a beef with the post office for a long time, whether it’s checks in the mail that never get there or arrive a week later than they should, it never seems like these people have their shit together.  To me it is just another vital service for the United States which the government controls, fucks up and annually loses millions of dollars.  I can’t even get a check delivered to me within a week and a half even though it was mailed from less than 20 miles away.  If the government can’t get my mail to me in a timely fashion how am I supposed to expect it will be any better at providing Health Care to the masses? The Government Accountability Office recently commented that, “without major change, the day will soon come when the Postal Service will be unable to pay its bills.”

Benjamin Franklin (my favorite person of all time) is rolling over in his grave on 2nd and Market right now at the state of how bad things have gotten for the service he founded and reared through it’s infancy.

Now the USPS will close as many as 700 Post Offices in an effort to save money.

Here is a list of some of the Post offices in Philadelphia that will be possibly closing in the near future:

PHI-30th Street – MOD PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-ADAMS AVENUE POS – Frankford PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-BOULEVARD STA PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-CASTLE FSTA – Southwark PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-CASTOR AVE. FINA – BLVD PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-FRANKLIN MILLS – Torresdale PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-GIRARD AVE – Spring Garden PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-JOHN WANAMAKER F – WPA PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-MANAYUNK STA PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-MAYFAIR PSTL STO – Holmesburg PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-NICETOWN FSTA PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-OLNEY STA PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-SOMERTON – Bustleton PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-WADSWORTH AVE FS – Market Sq PHILADELPHIA PA
PHI-WISSINOMING STAT – Tacony PHILADELPHIA PA

For a full list of Post Offices around the Country here is the link to a PDF.

That’s 15 Post Offices which may close in the City.  I’m not sure whether to be happy or sad about this.  Is closing Post Offices going to make the mail more efficient and save money?  I guess only time will tell but I’m pretty sure things can’t get much worse than they already are, at least in Philadelphia.

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Billy Mays: Dead

billy_maysBy: Billy BeerSlugger

These things come in three’s.  First Farrah Fawcett, then the King of Pop Michael Jackson and now superstar infomercial spokesperson Billy Mays.  You know Billy Mays from such products as OxiClean, Orange Glo, Kaboom and many other cleaning type products.

His death leaves us without a true torch bearer for “The Beard”.  No man since the new millennium has sported the beard with more pride or resolve.  So who will take up his mantle?  I can’t think of a single worthy person who continuously sports a beard in his everyday life.  Maybe a member of ZZ top, but you hope for someone a little more spry.

A true tragedy for the advertising world, Mays, Pennsylvania born, honed his pitch skills on the Atlantic City boardwalk after high school.  He recently appeared on an ESPN 360 commercial and had his own reality competition on Discovery Channel called Pitchmen.

Mays was on a plane from Philadelphia to Tampa which blew out a tire upon landing and had several objects strike him in the head due to the turbulence.  Though it is not clear whether this contributed to his death.

Mays was 50 years old, same as Michael Jackson.  Coincidence?  You make the call.

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Magic Mushrooms – Public Service Announcement

magicmushrooms_article
They Grown on Cow Shit? Really?

By: Billy BeerSlugger

I am by no means a druggie.  I have been to known to smoke weed from time to time but most of my inebriation occurs from drinking.  That doesn’t mean that I didn’t dabble in the occasional recreational chemical back in the day.  I just got a call from my buddy Teddy Toronto and he mentioned doing some mushies sometime this summer, possibly in a beach scenario.  “Just when I thought I was out… They pull me back in.”.

While I’ll never seriously consider putting a powdery substance up my nose, mushrooms hold a special place in my dead brain cells heart.  As a freshman in (community) college I had a friend who worked as a freelance street pharmacist.  While his main product was colored green, once in a while he would come across a large bag of mushrooms to distribute.  Being such a close friend with the lad I was given a steep discount off of street value, $15-$20 an 1/8.

Having just gone through a breakup with my high school girlfriend I was looking to express myself and my newly found college independence (even though I still lived at home).  What a better way to test my mettle then by taking mushrooms once or twice a week for a little more than a month.  Does a month qualify as a binge?

Anyway, I can remember going to the movies and eating mushrooms in the parking lot.  My friends and I went in and saw The Sixth Sense, a movie at the time, while on mushrooms, I thought was utterly terrible.  I was too messed up to follow it and amused myself by throwing popcorn at people and laughing at parts of the movie that weren’t supposed to be funny.  After the movie will mark the only time I have ever driven a motor vehicle on mushrooms.  Going 60mph in a 25 like I was in some sort of video game and all I had to do was push the reset button if I crashed.  Turfing up a local sports field until my friend had convinced me to drive back to his house and put the car in park.  Laughing the whole time, shit eating grin from ear to ear.

There was a night when a group of my friends took them and hung out in one of our bedrooms with a blacklight and strobe light on at the same time.  What an amazing and moving trip that was, especially when the strobe light was shut off and the black light was still on.  “Whoaaaaa!!!” was articulated by everyone in the room in unison.  It was on this trip that I just couldn’t fathom why the Notorious BIG had to die.

Another time I took what amounted to one and a half eighth’s (sorry I didn’t feel like converting the metrics on that).  The most I have ever taken and this was the only time I really felt like I was seeing things.  We walked to a local pizza shop and a graveyard on the way seemed cartoonish, but only out of the corner of my eye.  If I looked at it straight on it was a regular graveyard. It was as if this whole other world was hiding from me yet inviting me to join it at the same time.  Coming down from this trip, sitting alone in a chair on an enclosed porch, I still to this day am convinced I had figured out at least 84.37541% of the worlds problems.  I only wish I had a tape recorder to capture the ideas racing through my head for those two or so hours.  The world may be a better place.

I guess the last time I took any sort of mushroom product was while living at my fraternity house.  A gentleman was passing out mushrooms during hell weekend and soon after a talking dolphin disguised as mailbox began shouting at the pledges… RABBLE, RABBLE, RABBLE RABBLE.  I never laughed so hard in my life.

Those were the days.

Some things I’ve noticed while on them is yawning on the onset of tripping (these things aren’t working).  A heightened sense of awareness and want to go out and “do stuff” while on them.  Mushrooms are definitely an outdoor activity.  If I couldn’t speed walk somewhere while on mushrooms I’d probably eat my own head off.  You can drink a ton on Mushrooms.  I guess since you are tripping you really don’t notice you’re drunk or something.  There is a sense of kinship with the other people you took them with while tripping.  They may be the only people on the planet who get what you are going through at that point and there’s an unspoken understanding of that.

I am in no way condoning the use of Magic Mushrooms, just telling you some of the hijinks and experiences I got into while I was on them.

Stay off drugs kids…

Sincerely,

W.J. BeerSlugger