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The worst driveway contractor experience ... ever

This is a review of All-New Paving and Concrete, (732) 288-1700 based in Tom's River.

This company is dreadful. I say this knowing that negative reviews can really impact a small business, and I’m not out looking to maliciously hurt a local owner. I take negative reviews very seriously. However, *avoid* All New Paving. Why? Well, how do you judge the quality of any contractor?

1. give an honest, accurate quote
2. show up on time to do the work
3. complete the project with quality results
4. clean up afterward

Fail, Fail, Fail, and Fail.

We initially contracted for repaving the driveway while another contractor did some paving work around it; then, they pitched us to also do the paving work and eventually we gave them the second job. He was very responsive when trying to *get* the job – then… silence. Yes, I know, shame on me for giving a deposit of more than a minimal amount. We had to hound him for WEEKS to get him to show up and do the job. That’s not hyperbole; it was weeks of excuses mixed with long periods of not returning calls. Then, when he finally shows up: “oh, it looks like you need an extra layer of asphalt – that’s an extra $1,100.” At this point of course the driveway is torn up, so we’re in a bind.

BTW an extra 1100 blows the budget off the project (almost an extra 20%), so now we need to negotiate him “working with us” to absorb the extra unforeseen cost. He agrees to let us pay the difference from the original “estimate” in another installment 10 days later, but demands a post-dated check! Because the budget is blown, we change the paving project to a replacement of the retaining walls on either side of the driveway (get rid of the railroad ties and replace with stone). He then tried to get more cash on the spot for more materials – umm, no.

Then when the job is “finished” there are large gaps between the new wall and the rest of the property… more than enough for someone to snap an ankle. There’s a big hole in the new retaining wall where it ties to the existing step. There’s landscaping that was removed and not put back. And my favorite – there’s a giant pile of the railroad ties sitting on my lawn. Right on the lawn in front of my house. ON THE F’NG LAWN. For another week!

The only reason this stuff got fixed is because we canceled that post-dated check for the balance. Good thing too, since he tried to cash it early. Do we really have to hold the money hostage to get the job completed? Apparently, yes. But you shouldn’t have to.
Well, you say: maybe this reviewer is just a bitter curmudgeon, who is so anal-retentive and OCD that he blows tiniest smudges out of proportion – maybe the above litany of errors is all in my head? I retort: Judge for yourself… pics are below.

note the giant gap between the wall and the step...

Here's a closer look. Does that look "done" to you?

Is that big enough for a toddler to hurt themselves? Yep.

On my GD lawn. What do you think the grass underneath that pile looks like?

You're nasty. You know who you are.

If there's a hell, there's a special room in it for people who go to the bathroom and don't wash their hands. But, many are unaware that there is a slightly smaller, adjacent hellroom for people who go to the bathroom and wash their hands without using soap! Especially when it's RIGHT THERE.

No pizza. How about some "F You" instead?

It used to be that when I got accosted by panhandlers it would be someone completely derelict - the kind of hobo you'd see on the street yelling at trees or fighting with ghosts, sporting a mangy beard that was half Taliban, half pubes. But now we live in the age of Obama, and with all this hope and change burrowing its way to our collective prostate, being a beggar is far less exclusive. Today I was stopped on the street by a guy. Well-dressed, clean-shaven, and other than wearing dark glasses at night he seemed "normal", whatever that means nowadays. He even carried a briefcase. I stopped because he threw a "dude!" At me as we passed each other - and I thought he recognized me. Not "Excuse me, sir." Not "Buddy can you spare a dime?" Dude.

Then, he reaches out to shake my hand! "Hey man, could you help me out?" Oh shit! Stranger danger, I thought. No handshakes from random stranger in swine-flu season, thanks. "What's up?" I throw back at him briskly. Or bruskly, whichever's the right vocabulary word.

He seemed affronted. "With all due respect - with ALL DUE RESPECT - I'm trying to get a slice of pizza..." He had to repeat "with all due respect" for me, because apparently that's like a secret code word for "buy me pizza". My toddler just uses "PIZZA! PIZZA!", I should teach him this trick.

Anyway, I high-tailed it outta there. I had to hurry to vote against Corzine (which in Russian translates loosely to "basket").

How about you? Do you buy pizza for strangers?

Is it something in the water?

I wonder, what happens when someone signs on to write a column for the NYT? Does the paper filter the list of candidates to make sure no one with any reasonable cognitive ability is dismissed? Do they only accept columnists from an approved Party list, in effect serving as the propaganda arm of the [use your imagination] Party, without having to consider the commercial, logical, ethical, or journalistic impact of their content? Or maybe they hire normal people, and through a hazing period of tiger cages, Clockwork Orange-style indoctrination, and massive doses of LSD turn them into barking lunatics?

For example, reading anything written by Paul Krugman SHOULD result in a reaction of "Paul, what the fuck is wrong with you?" But yet, he gets to keep devaluing the NYT, journalism, and the Nobel Prize with crap like this piece pining for Richard Nixon's economic policies. Nick Gillespie at Reason wrote a critique of Krug-nonsense here, but frankly a critique could be written weekly about Krugman's inane rambling. But he writes on.

Or this week, when "The World Is Flat" author Thomas L. Friedman, who also writes a column for the NYT, conjured up a screed about how China is better governed than America. Allow me to quote Matt Welch's piece from Reason's Hit & Run column:

The next time anyone tries to tell you that Thomas L. Friedman is a serious
thinker, or a tribune for global democracy, or even a good columnist, or
basically someone who isn't worth sending on the next slow boat to Shanghai,
please refer him to this despicable column from today, then ask: Do you, too, prefer Chinese governance to American democracy? No really, Friedman says that:

There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

Then there's the recurring fun and games of Maureen Dowd's convulsing gibberish, and Roger Cohen's "reporting" of how happy the Jews of Iran are.

I don't understand - who pays for all this nonsense?

Religion is just Grand - part 3

You know what we need more of in America? Religion. All good things flow from religion, and faith in the almighty. Without it we wouldn’t have Jesus salt, beheadings, honor killings, boy-shagging, gay-bashing, or ignorance – in short, we wouldn’t have most of the horrible, evil, and oppressive elements of the human condition. And without evil, how can we be good? Got that? Amen.

Here’s a another great example from across the pond (the UK) through the BBC:


Irish church knew abuse 'endemic' (article here)

An inquiry into child abuse at Catholic institutions in Ireland has found
church leaders knew that sexual abuse was "endemic" in boys'
institutions.

Ritual beatings

The report said that girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.
The five-volume study concluded that church officials encouraged ritual beatings and consistently shielded their orders' paedophiles from arrest amid a "culture of self-serving secrecy".
It also found that government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation. The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.

Religion is just Grand - part 2

You know what we need more of in America? Religion. All good things flow from religion, and faith in the almighty. Without it we wouldn’t have Jesus salt, beheadings, honor killings, boy-shagging, gay-bashing, or ignorance – in short, we wouldn’t have most of the horrible, evil, and oppressive elements of the human condition. And without evil, how can we be good? Got that? Amen.

Here’s a great example from right here in the USA through the Newsweek:

Parents' Rights, Judges' Rules (article here)

Last week, Daniel Hauser sat quietly in a Minneapolis courtroom while adults
debated how to combat the Hodgkin's lymphoma that has invaded his body. Doctors
wanted the 13-year-old boy to undergo chemotherapy and radiation. His parents
were resisting: their religion advocated natural and homeopathic methods. The
judge ruled on Friday that Hauser's family must select an oncologist and that he
must receive chest X-rays to determine the extent of his cancer, the results of
which would help determine a new medical plan of action. By Tuesday, the boy and
his mother were missing, having skipped the scheduled chest X-ray appointment; a
warrant has been issued for the mother's arrest. (emphasis mine)

Religion is just Grand

You know what we need more of in America? Religion. All good things flow from religion, and faith in the almighty. Without it we wouldn’t have Jesus salt, beheadings, honor killings, boy-shagging, gay-bashing, or ignorance – in short, we wouldn’t have most of the horrible, evil, and oppressive elements of the human condition. And without evil, how can we be good? Got that? Amen.

Here’s a great example from Somalia through the BBC:

Somali justice - Islamist-style (article here)

The dusty streets of Kismayo in Somalia echoed to the sound of a vehicle with
loudspeakers summoning residents to a new form of public "entertainment" earlier
this month.
People were being invited to see a man have his hand chopped off
in a public park in the city.

Wake Up Your Cat, Take A Picture Of It

Though I do hate cats (they're little bastards, admit it!) this is stupid enough to be humorous...

read more | digg story

Like herpes, Spitzer just won't go away

Whenever you feel like things are settling down, that life is starting to make sense again, and that some balance has been restored to the natural order of things, some kind of stupid bullshit will throw it off again. For me, today, just as I was feeling there was a bit of justice and normalcy creeping back into our collective lives (no real reason btw that I felt that, maybe it was just gas) I see this headline in Slate (pic above).

Shouldn’t this guy be in prison for corruption and whore-banging? And didn’t he, in very large part, help cause the AIG debacle? Does anyone have any memory at all left, or are we al living in Memento world?

A pillar of (kosher) salt

Oh my god. No, I mean “OH MY GOD”. Not in the devout religionist sort of way, but in the “OH MY GOD MY BRAIN IS OOZING OUT OF MY EARS TO ESCAPE THE STUPIDITY THAT MY EYES FORCED IT TO INGEST”. What the F is wrong with people? It’s clear that generally, to be religious, one needs some degree of ignorance and gullibility. The degree varies, but has to be more than 0. For example, Huckabee and Mullah Omar would be on the way more than 0 side. What is unclear, however, is how that ignorance and gullibility (while usually repelling initiative and free thought) seems to sometimes bring on violent dry-heaves of ingenuity. For example, while most religionists are too lazy to do anything other than penetrate small boys or stone women to death, Mel Gibson goes through a lot of effort to make his jesusfilms.

Another example, and the one that set me off this morning, is jesussalt. It’s not called jesussalt but it should be. It’s called Blessed Christian Salt. OUCH my brain just sizzled a bit more from typing the words. Let me explain. You see, there’s an ignorant jackass named Joe Godlewski. Joe has devoted his life to doing three things, and doing them well.

First, Joe loves himself some hot, fresh Jesus.
Second, Joe hates Jews.
Third, Joe loves to cut hair. Or he did until he retired.

And here in lies Joe’s conundrum. How can he stay true to his ideals of loving Jesus and hating Jews (the hair thing I guess is immaterial) while every day, some innocent Christian child can turn on that godless box called a TV, and be subjected to some TV chef talking about KOSHER SALT? Get it? Kosher salt is clearly not jesussalt, it’s jewsalt. What if the kid sees Emeril sprinkling some Kosher salt on a cod or spider monkey or whatever? The kid may try the salt himself and then PRESTO! Eternal Damnation.

So Joe becomes proactive to solve the conundrum. He doesn’t call for banning kosher salt, or censoring TV chefs. No sir! Not Joe the Barber! He goes out and created his very own BLESSED CHRISTIAN SALT. No, it’s not made of blessed Christians! It’s salt. Blessed. By a Christian. See how that works?

Here’s the article from slashfood (http://www.slashfood.com/2009/03/04/christian-izing-salt-is-just-not-kosher/), which also links to the examiner.com story that brought us this wonderfulness.

I really hope this is just an internet hoax that I’ve been duped by. But it seems jesusy and stupid enough that it could be real. People make stupid Jesus products all the time.

To put it in perspective

Sure, you may be having a rough day. I know I have been, like for the last 1072 days. But to put it in perspective, things could always be worse. For example some fucknut could plow their car through your front door. This is exactly what happened to my favorite chicken joint (Cluck U chicken). They've had to put up plywood walls and a fake front door as if they're Katrina victims.

Octuplets could be costly for taxpayers

To be clear, I think this woman is a pretty horrible person with a poor grasp of reality. She's horrible because she's condemning these 14 kids to a life of hardship. Planning on supporting them by landing a reality-show gig is akin to planning to support them by hitting the lotto, or becoming a rock star. And yet, despite my seething disgust for this selfish imbecile, the main thing i keep thinking is "those poor kids". It's really the kids who will suffer, for both material things and for attention and emotional nourishment. I don't care how loving you think you are, there's only 24 hours in a day, and 14 babies. You just - physically - can't care for each of them in a day. How'd you like to be kid #9 of 14, growing up on foodstamps and seeing mom for 20 minutes a day? Plus now the taxpayers have to foot the bill!

Oh wait, she's going into the lucrative profession of "counseling".

Octuplets could be costly for taxpayers

As a single parent with no income, Nadya Suleman could receive thousands of dollars a month in government assistance. And the Medi-Cal bill for her newborns is mounting.

read more digg story

Be the "change" you want to see

So the country has made a call for change, and the supposed change should've started this week after inagurationpalooza. Change means many things to different people. I, for example, this about the "hard working Americans" I interact with daily, and wish change on many of them.

Specifically, I wish the guy who drives the shuttle bus from the train to my car - who decided he was going to call it a night early and go drinking - would "change". He's not being beaten with a highway cone, and I'd like that to change. He's not being anally deflowered by a rabid shetland pony, and I'd like that to change. He's not getting a full body poison ivy wrap before being tied in a sack, and I'd like that to change.

Frankly he's not doing his job very well and I'd love for that to change too. While the odometer says its only 1.5 miles (which I walked in 20 minutes) it still sucked. It was late, I'd had some drinks, my foot hurts, and oh by the way it's January so it was f'ng cold. Marching a mile in the cold and dark is something reserved for soldiers in training or POWs or homeless people.

Plus my blackberry died so I had to wait hours to post this rant.

D-bags abound

I used to think that duchebags were deserving of sympathy. But now I think that duchebags, while sad, lonely, creepy people, are to blame for their own conditions. Its a vicious spiral. The same things that cause them to be duchebaggy and lonely are the things they turn to to alleviate that sad lonely creepyness.

For example, the duchebag in the seat on front of me on the trains is a tool. He's got long hair and looks like he hasn't showered since the election. Smells pretty bad too. This all (almost assuredly) adds up to him being a lonely loser. So what does he do to help the situation? He's sitting there playing with a doll.

Yes, a little anime character doll, a girl with a sword an maybe some demon wings. It has a little stand attached so that he could presumably find just the right pose, and display her proudly. He's practicing poses right now. I have no way of knowing but I suspect this is not greasy-boy's first anime doll. Do I feel sorry for this duchebag? No, because he chose to exacerbate his duchey condition by publicly playing with a creepy doll.

And yes he looks like one of the Trenchcoat Mafia from Columbine. This is what my fellow commuters are subjected to.

I hate that little tramp Dora

So a couple of days ago, I posted "Vlad hates Diego" as my facebook status. To my surprise, this generated a flurry of replies (ok a couple of replies, but to me that's a flurry). Hence I feel the need to clarify my statement.

I don't actually *hate* Diego; I was just kind of sick of him when I wrote that. My kid's a big Diego fan.

I *do* hate Dora though. She and her little non-sequitor minions all receive my loathing (you too Boots, and you, the weird blue cow with the bandanna). Why you ask? Well:

1. She dresses like a slob, with her belly hanging out of her shirt. And she's a child that goes off "exploring" in the wilderness. Where are her parents? I don't want my kid wandering into the woods by himself with hopes of a magic map rescuing him.
   
2. All the socio-political bullshit that show tries to program into our kids. The only solution to many of the challenges she faces are to speak spanish?
   
3. There's no "Jenny the Explorer" teaching latin american kids to speak english
   
4. The only badguy (Swiper) is the only character that doesn't speak spanish, nor have an accent.
   
5. Sometimes she runs across characters that don't speak english, and makes no attempt to help them even though she's bilingual. We're all expected to learn Spanish to communicate with Tuga the Turtle (ok that's a Diego character but its the same principle)
   
6. Finally, I don't like the way she talks to the viewer like they're retarded (Do YOU see the TREE? Good!)

End of diatribe.

Hey, you! How much money do you make?

Looky at what I found, courtesy of a Money magazine article:

http://www.glassdoor.com

Gamechanger.

Anonymously post your title, company and salary, and you get info on other salaries. And then you feel bad.

George Saunders does Palin

This is awesome - http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2008/09/22/080922sh_shouts_saunders.

But do you know what the difference is between a dead moose with lipstick on and a dead moose without lipstick?

Lipstick.

Think about it.

Moose are, truth be told, Élites. They are big and fast and sort of rule the forest. Sarah took that one down a notch. Who's Élite now, Bullwinkle?

New Favorite Site pro tempore

I've been way too political lately, so I decided to again rant about the collection of human mental excrement that is the internet. Check out this awesomeness for example:

http://www.theonion.com/content/atlas/

This is a link to The Onion's "Our Dumb World" site. They have country profiles as well as point-of-interest highlights. Click around, see what you find. My favorite item: the country profile for Democratic Republic of Congo - Like a Zoo You Get Killed At...

War on Christmas - the road to victory part II

Now I’m really starting to hate Christmas. Particularly that fact that every housewife with the attention span of a hyperactive puppy and an SUV the size of a school bus is out on the damn roads, causing traffic and making it impossible to drive around the mall parking lot (let alone actually park). I spent half an hour in traffic behind some idiot bitch in an GMC Environmental Holocaust® or whatever that 6-mpg thing is, with freaking bumper stickers all over it. I’m so pissed it was already dark and the picture I tried to take with my camera phone didn’t come out – you might not believe this nonsense without the photographic evidence. All 6 of the bumper stickers were about FERRETS. She even had a license plate frame about ferret farming or ferret rights or ferret fucking or something. Bumper sticker sticking out in memory: “Happiness is holding a ferret”. Fuck. Too bad I wasn’t blogging this summer when I was stuck behind the freak with Koala Bear shit all over her car – including vanity koala bear license plate. I wont tell you what it was (as that would identify her) but take my word for it: it was fucking stupid. Bumper stickers like “I [heart] koala bears” and “I brake for Koalas”. You hit the brakes for them do you? We have lots of crazy shit on NJ roads – jug handles, orange cone displays, New York drivers – but so far there’s been no Koala-slalom events forcing us to brake for a pack/herd/gaggle/whatever of fuzzy critters eating bamboo in the middle of I-95.

Anyway sorry this was about Christmas. So Christmas forces all these assholes out onto the safe highways and byways of America. Ladies, if you can’t handle your big SUV or minivan, get a fucking Mini. To be fair, around this time of year there’s a ton of assholes in $15,000 Hyundais with $45,000 of wheels, lights, and other shit bolted on to them that also feel the need to go cruising up to the local mall. Guys, if you need to “customize” your car, you have a small dick. That’s what that means. You lose guy-points if you drive anything neon-colored. You lose testosterone when you put in a custom muffler. You slowly become a WOMAN DRIVER. The proof is that all these “The Fast and the Furious” wannabes drive just as bad as the housewives in the school buses. And unlike the SUVs which take up two spots due to girth, they take up 2 spots deliberately… so that no one scratches their “ride”. Fuck you STAY HOME.

I won’t even start on actually going into a mall around the holidays. I used to work retail, and I can’t describe the level of disdain and hostility felt towards annoying customers. The entire mall is like Cliff Yablonski’s website come alive.