Day: December 20, 2013

If you’re reading this, congratulations. You’ve survived another year. We made it through a perilous 2013, filled with bad things happening, disappointing movies and famous people saying things they later related. Plus, one guy had an imaginary girlfriend. It was another year of everyone talking to each other, then eventually realizing that no one was listening, so they began shouting over each other. It’s time to close out the year, and good riddance. Join me as we look back on the insanity that was 2013. Self-medication is recommended.

January

Happy fiscal cliff!
In the first week of the year, the 112th Congress, in its last effort, finally reached a deal to avoid going over the so-called fiscal cliff, the only problem is that they didn’t get it done until Jan. 1, when we had already gone over the cliff. However, the language in the bill applied the deal retroactively. So we went over the cliff, but then Congress flew around the Earth at a really fast speed, going back in time by a matter of hours, and unthrew us over the cliff. They then made way for the 113th Congress and its plan of continuing to accomplish nothing.

Juicers need not apply
The Baseball Hall of Fame class of 2013 was … no one. No candidate received the necessary 75% of the vote needed to be inducted, it’s the first time that’s happened since 1996. For some reason, the sports writers who cheered on the steroid-era players like Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens and others, decided they weren’t inspired by these cheaters. It seemed like a pretty stupid move. You don’t want to make juicers mad.

The inauguration was dubbed over
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were sworn in for a second term in a small ceremony. Then, they were sworn in again the next day, because that was Martin Luther King Day, and they had already gone through the trouble of setting up streamers. Obama laid out his plan for the next four years, including some ideas he had hardly mentioned before. But who cares about covering any of that stuff? The media were more concerned about whether Beyoncé lip-synched. Continue reading You Missed It: End of 2013 edition

For many a fan of The Simpsons, it’s just another great line from the golden period of the show. For many a college student, it’s a necessary way of life. For the United States Postal System, it may be what saves them.

Since 1909, it’s been illegal to send wine, beer or spirits through the mail in the United States. As such, courier services such as FedEx and UPS have taken up that vacant role, ultimately thriving thanks to states relaxing their laws regarding the shipping of wine.

Now, the USPS is hoping that lawmakers will pass the Postal Reform Act of 2013, allowing mail carriers nationwide to once again be able to hand off beer, wine and spirits to citizens and patrons. It’s speculated that doing so could earn as much as $50 million per year … which would add up to 1/100th of the deficit the USPS ran up last year.

Well, you gotta start somewhere.

Have you been saving a special bottle of wine for Christmas or New Year’s Eve this year? You might want to make sure it isn’t counterfeit.

No, we’re not saying it isn’t wine. It’s just that it might not be the wine that you paid extra for, especially if it was made by Rudy Kurniawan, the first person ever convicted in the U.S. of counterfeiting wine.

Kurniawan was found guilty on Wednesday for blending younger wines and older French vintages and bottling them as more expensive (ergo, better?) labels. He fooled most tasters, proving what they know about wine. But, it was his labels that did him in. One of the winemakers he had counterfeited recognized that the year on some bottles were impossible as he had not made that wine until 1982, not 1945 and ’49 as the labels claimed.

On the other hand, now’s your last chance to get expensive-tasting wine for your bosses and in-laws for cheap. Contact the NYC evidence locker for more details.

Christmas is a time to give and to enjoy one’s friends and family. But it’s also a time to prove that one is better than someone else.

A village of 135 gingerbread houses in Queens, New York took the Guinness Book of World Record as the largest ever last month, setting off celebrations and parades such as the city has never known. However, the Norwegian city of Bergen says it should hold the throne, with a village of 1,990 houses and trains made out of gingerbread.

New York is a tough town, and they’re not going down without a fight. The city argues that the Norwegian village doesn’t qualify, because it wasn’t all made by the same recipe and the organizers aren’t able to produce all of the recipes used for it–a Guinness rule.

We’re pretty sure that Santa Claus is an American, otherwise he would have been deported many Christmases ago. So we’d like to think that the big guy is up there at the North Pole rooting for us. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!