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Bored at Work: Racing the Sun

As the school year winds down, many of us at Buntology are preparing for graduation. This means we are very busy, so lay off, OK!?!? (And by busy I mean stressed out.) Here is a piece written by Will, who prefaced the story by telling us: “Not really typical stuff I know, but w/e I was bored (hence title).”

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Every winter I eagerly anticipate one of my favorite days of the year. When we spring those clocks forward. I couldn’t possibly put a price on that extra hour of daylight. For people like me who enjoy the long days, or people with Seasonal Affective Disorder, spring is a big sigh of relief. Once the world feels right again, and Father Time is back where he belongs, it’s just a countdown until June 21, the longest day of the year. Recently I proposed a hypothetical question to my friends, asking them how far they thought someone could get leaving from Boston at sunrise and driving west, only stopping once the sun went down. And because it’s a nice, sunny, 73 degree day and I’m sitting inside bored at work, I decided to try and answer that question to the best of my ability.

Don’t forget the Dead!

This one’s for all you jam-band junkies out there. Guest writer Neil Benjamin, a sports writer for the North Adams Transcript, taps his true talent: getting into the music. He can probably get you into the show, too. – Alicia

With all the frenzy surrounding the return of Phish, it’s easy to forget about all other music. I mean, let’s face it, Phish are musical gods.

Trey Anastasio and the boys returned from a nearly five-year absence in March, and it was all anyone seemed to talk about. Or maybe it was just me. Dreadlocks everywhere smirked with excitement.

But if you need a reminder, another fabulous band has recently returned to the spotlight. The band that originally made 20-minute songs hip is back. Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, along with friends Jeff Chimenti and Warren Haynes, embarked on their spring tour on Sunday.

planet stifled [by rochelle]

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Last summer my darling daughter, Angela, worked for Planet Fitness. Let’s just say she was treated poorly. OK, let’s just say, they treated her like crap and the Bunt family swore they would never set foot inside their establishment.

(THEY FIRED ME FOR WEARING SANDALS! Alright, so they made me leave because I didn’t have sneakers on (they weren’t even officially open yet), and instead of going to a nearby TJ Maxx I went to a nearby 99 and got drunk. Then went back to PF to use their tanning booth. Employee discount, holler! – Angela)
Mess with one of us and you earn the wrath of us all.
Fast forward to April 5.

Barack Obama: Giver of iPods, Star Wars, and ET DVDs [by Will]

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Let’s be honest. We’ve all been there. It’s Christmas day and you’re watching someone open a gift you bought for them with your fingers crossed, hoping you don’t get the fake smile and the, “Oh, neat… Chinese checkers” head-tilt. And on the other hand, we’ve also had to pretend we’re excited about the motivational book about soccer from a single aunt who’s into new-age. I can’t help but imagine that that is the same reaction British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had to put on when Obama gave him his gift while Brown visited the White House back in March.

I would love to have seen Barack’s face when the Prime Minister handed him “a pen holder fashioned from the oak timber of HMS Ganner, a Navy vessel that served on anti-slavery missions off Africa,” and then, “a framed commissioning paper for the HMS Resolute, a Royal navy ship that came to symbolize British-American goodwill when it was rescued by the U.S. from icebergs and given to Queen Victoria.” Obama probably gulped, took his hands out of his pockets, and nervously took a step back before pulling out his gift for Gordon Brown, a box set of 25 American DVDs.

Josh’s Final Four predictions

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It’s March Madness Tourney Time, and nothing is better. I had the pleasure of attending the Villanova vs. Pittsburgh game last Saturday night. Villanova ended up winning 78-76 with a finger roll layup with .5 seconds left in the second half, just after Fields (Pitt) hit two free throws to tie the game.

Unfortunately, I was pulling for Pittsburgh because I had them winning the whole tournament in my money bracket. I have to give respect to the Villanova fans. Nearly 90 percent of the T.D. Banknorth Garden was Nova supporters, which without a doubt helped them to victory.

This game was hands down the best in the tourney so far and not just because I was present.

Health care reform- Bunt style [by Rochelle]

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I have some ideas on how to fix the health care system. OK, maybe more thoughts on what is wrong with it and not so much how to fix it. OK, maybe I just feel like whining about the latest thing that happened to me at my local health care facility.

A while back I went into a tirade about how often mistakes were made to my prescriptions and how those mistakes resulted in hundreds of dollars in medicine being sent to me that I could not use or return. I figure if that many mistakes could be made to my family, surely this same scenario is being repeated in houses across America, costing millions of dollars to insurance companies.

This week I had another incident that illustrates the ridiculous waste of money in the health care system.

Patrick RoboTrips for Buntology!

This week, Buntology addiction writer Patrick address issues such as: Why does Nickelback suck? Why is Jim Carrey mailing it in? And Sir Paul – a “pussy”? (Don’t worry, saying that hurts Patrick as much as it hurts us.) Read on …
Most recent pic we have of Patrick - cool hat, right?

Wow. My beat on Buntology.com is addiction. Does that mean the Bunts will pay for me to experiment with all kinds of substances and see if I get hooked? (We won’t pay, but we’ll help you. In the name of science!) Always wanted to try the RoboTrip. You know, when you guzzle a whole bottle of Robitussin, and 10 minutes later you’re on Mars, making friends with E.T.

Or how about doing mushrooms before flying on an airplane? Good God. Could you imagine? Pretty good odds you’d end up on the 11 o’clock news. “This just in. A commercial flight had to make an emergency landing after an unruly passenger locked himself in the bathroom and started uncontrollably weeping while reciting lines from one of Charles Manson’s songs recorded in prison. No one was injured on the flight, but more than 100 passengers vowed to never fly on an airplane again.”

Up the Mountain and Down Again – A Skier’s Tale by Will C.

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“Skiing is something little kids figure out how to do within the first 5-10 minutes of trying.”

That is the exact quote that I wrote on the Facebook event wall for a New Hampshire weekend ski trip with some friends. There was hesitation among some people to try skiing because they had never been before. Well, I had been skiing about three or four times before as a kid and I didn’t remember having any trouble. But then again, I also don’t remember learning how to ride a bike, but I’m sure I fell about two hundred times before I got it.

Fighting the good fight [by Patrick Ronan]

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At about 1:30 a.m. this past Saturday morning, I succumbed to a higher power. A greater force that has complete and utter control of my life.
Nicotine.
It had been 4 ½ weeks since my last cigarette. Dec. 7. That was my last drag of a Camel Lite before I tossed and turned in my bed for three hours. I couldn’t sleep. Was it because it of Pearl Harbor Day?
Unfortunately, when I think of Pearl Harbor, I think of Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett. I’ve only lost sleep over those two guys once or twice in my life, but it wasn’t on Dec. 7, 2008.
I lost sleep because I needed to quit smoking.

Jezebel.com: approve me dammit! [by angela]

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Jezebel.com, a blog geared towards feminism, empowerment, women keeping it real, and all that good stuff, has recently irked me.

The website, launched in May 2007 as a division of Gawker Media, is one of my favorites. I check it multiple times a day, everyday, and it’s even on my tool bar favorites list.

After reading this article (by my favorite Jezebel author, Tracie Egan) about The Duggar family *shudder* I was compelled to leave a comment. I said something to the effect of “Am I the only one who can’t stand the Duggar family? Having 18 children is basically a form of child abuse because you know some of those kids are neglected and doing heroin without their parents’ knowledge.” Or something like that. After making up a little profile for myself I posted the comment only to find out that “You need to audition to become a commenter. Your comments will be displayed once your account is approved.”