What He Does: RAG replies all to every mass communication email. Sometimes it’s a lame one-liner. Sometimes it’s to ask a meaningless question. And sometimes it’s just to confirm he got the email. Regardless of the reason he’s in EVERYONE’s inbox.

How It Affects You: Between corporate emails, your aunt forwarding right wing propaganda, and all the other junk you receive the last thing you want to have to comb through is this retard inquiring whether Columbus Day is a holiday. You’re not sure if he’s begging for attention or just fucking clueless, but either way you’re considering giving him a code red in the men’s room.

Level of Mind-Numbing Annoyance: 6 out of 10. The guy deserves a serious ass trouncing, but at least Al Gore invented the delete button.

Cool & Tough Retaliations:

• Mock his reply all with one of your own asking if you’re still required to wear pants to work. Sign his name to it. You may want to gauge the overall sense of humor of your coworkers first though.

• Set up an anonymous Gmail account and repeatedly forward him all his stupid emails with commentary like, “Nice one, fuckface” or, “I rubbed my balls on your mouse after I read this one.”‘

• Bang his wife.

• Sign him up for email alerts from NextRound.net. He won’t know what the fuck’s going on. Brendan Fraser faces?

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I work for a living. I get up at 6:30AM. I go to the office and I do lawyer stuff until the early evening. When I get home I immediately check my work email. Out of nowhere I am a pathetic, slightly chubby, responsible adult. As those of you who have gotten to know me might imagine, I look forward to lunch at McDonald’s more than any other part of my day. Recently when I got together with the rest of Team Cool & Tough for at a buddy’s wedding, the guys challenged me to eat 60 McNuggets in one sitting.

The Official Nugget Challenge: Toast would purchase 100 nuggets, and then Toast, JB, and Maske would pay me $1 for every nugget if I could finish 60. Then I would make $2 per nugget for each nugget I could eat after 60. Did I mention this would be per person? So I would get $180 if I could get the 60 nuggets down and then I would get $6 per nugget from 61 on. Awesome, right?

Well, I suck and bailed on the challenge for two reasons:

1) I can’t eat when I’ve been drinking. (We started drinking that morning at breakfast. They extended the challenge at 3PM. And yes, this is the only time in my life I’m not ravenously hungry.)

2) I ate lunch at 1:30, so the little appetite I did have that afternoon was gone.

But, the Nugget challenge was officially tabled until a future date. Don’t worry, with football season approaching it’s going to happen. We will keep you informed.

After I shook off my three day hangover from that weekend, I had an epiphany: I CAN EAT 60 MCNUGGETS in a single sitting. I have no doubt in my mind. On an average day around lunchtime I know I can consume at least 2,800 calories (and most likely a lot more). It’s kind of depressing to know there are few things I want more in life than to house massive quantities of food.

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The transition from college life to the real world is a cruel one, especially when it comes to the gratuitous use of profanity.

The Issue: You just spent four to seven years cursing like a sailor on meth, now you’ve got a job where they expect you to shave every morning and not answer questions with “fuck if I know…”

When Things Get Weird:

• When the sixty year-old admin overhears you refer to your computer as a worthless cocksucker.

• When your buddy calls your work phone and you repeatedly let him know what a pussy he is for not meeting you for a beer.

• When you tell the IT guy he can eat your ass in good fun. Except he doesn’t recognize the good fun.

• When you spill coffee on your shirt in the breakroom and unleash a never-before-heard combination of “fuckstick”, “shitballs”, and “c— puncher”.

How It Affects You: If you can’t reign in the profanity rather quickly you’ll either get shitcanned or forced to complete some HR courses on professionalism, each comparably miserable depending on how hard up for cash you are.

Only Ways to Adapt:

• Become the office mute (low to medium difficulty, you don’t want to talk to the losers in your office anyway).

• Train your brain to associate profanity with booze (medium difficulty, easier transition if you’re a borderline alcoholic).

• Flanderize yourself (high difficulty, debilitatingly lame).

• Only work for guys who are way shadier than you are. WAY shadier.

Palace on a Lake ran in the 6th race at Philadelphia Park on Sunday. It was eventful.Palace is known for being a skiddish horse. Before her first race she freaked out on her way to the starting gate and took off like an escaped convict through an unlocked door. Her behavior actually delayed that race a couple minutes while the rodeo clowns corralled her.

The guys at Westpoint blamed those antics on “1^st race jitters”, so this time out we were pretty excited when she went straight to the gate and didn’t waste a bunch of extra energy running around in circles like JB in a Vegas strip club. But, as usual, that is not the end of the story.

While Palace sat patiently in her gate, some 99 to 1 horse refused to get in theirs. It took about 2 minutes to get the stupid donkey loaded. I was begging for them to just off the thing but apparently that’s not kosher.

The race finally started but unfortunately nobody told Palace. She broke terribly and immediately fell to the back of the pack. Palace was dead last as they rounded the first turn. All I could think about was how I was going to need to change my cell phone number to avoid the Team C&T verbal lynch mob.

As the horses rounded the back stretch I had a funny feeling this race was going to end like everything else in my life: badly. But just as all hope was lost, the announcer claimed that “Palace on a Lake is coming on from the outside.” Huh?

Palace suddenly remembered she is a horse and this was a race and she rallied hard from the back of the pack.

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After waiting over a year to get Palace on a Lake on the track we only had to wait a couple weeks for her second race.Palace will be racing in the 6^th Race at Philadelphia Park this Sunday, July 13th. Post time is 2:30PM. If you want to watch the race it may be on DIRECTV channel 602 or you can go to philadelphiapark.com.

SMac and I will be in attendance for this one, bringing a level of awesomeness to the City of Brotherly Love that it hasn’t seen in some time. That pretty much guarantees work will suck balls on Monday, which is kind of ironic because we’ll most likely be working next week solely to make up for the amount of money we lose on Sunday. Alright, maybe I’m only talking about myself, but I guarantee that at the very least SMac will sit shotgun for the self destruction.

So if you’ve been looking for a reason to be a degenerate on a Summer Sunday afternoon, now you have an excuse.

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What He Does: MSG squats down in the stall directly next to the one you’re in even though there are other stalls available.

How It Affects You: By avoiding buffer stall etiquette, MSG positions himself uncomfortably close to you. The whole phenomenon is super creepy. You can see his shoes. You can hear EVERYTHING. Swishing pants. Encouragement grunts. Bowel movement after bowel movement.

Level of Mind-Numbing Annoyance: 9 out of 10. Middle-stalling is one of the most disturbing and intrusive things that can occur in the office.

Cool & Tough Retaliations:

• Eat nothing buy shitty Mexican for a week and continually follow MSG into the bathroom. See who gets a taste of their own medicine.

• Vaseline the middle stall lid.

• Create a “male seeking male” ad with his details on Craigslist and anonymously forward it to his wife.

• Leave him voice messages pretending to be the office gay guy suggesting a middle stall rendezvous.

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If you’re hitting the beach on the 4th it’s important you stay active and don’t just lay in the sand soaking up sun like some goon whose primary objective is even color. Your primary objective — like on all holidays — should be finding an entertaining way to get drunk.

And while there are plenty of activities to keep you busy at the beach there are only a few that are both enjoyable AND won’t spill your beer. Here are our favorites:

Beach Bocce Ball

The ancient Italian game just as the creators intended, except with a lot more beer and a lot less rules.

The Basics: Divide into groups (single players or two person teams), each represented by a different color ball. Score a point if you toss your colored ball closest to the small white marker ball.

Beverage Compatibility. High. Beer in non-dominate hand at all times. Unless you’re overcompensating for something your beer is rarely threatened.

Chick Ruinage Factor: Medium. Girls will occasionally want to play but unlike a lot of activities they can participate without completely ruining the game.

Overall Score: 5 out of 5. Team Cool & Tough’s beach game of choice. An ideal blend of beach, booze, and competition with the added bonus of unlimited “ball” jokes.

Horseshoes

The old faithful of beer oriented beach activities.

The Basics: If you don’t know how to throw horseshoes, please visit this site.

Beverage Compatibility: High. Limited movement. High fives and aggressive tosses can sometimes lead to spillage.

Chick Ruinage Factor: Low. There’s something about iron horseshoes and iron stakes that keeps the ladies away. You know you’ve got a real clinger if she begs to participate instead of reading US Weekly.

Overall Score: 4 out of 5. Only real negative is being limited to four people, meaning if you suck you could end up sitting out for extended periods of time.

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Palace on a Lake finished a respectable 4th place yesterday in the 6th race at Delaware Park. And yes, there were more than 4 horses.

She of course managed to lose all our wagers in ironic fashion by finishing one spot out of the money, but it was an overall net gain for the good guys since she did win some prize money, enough to keep her in oats for a while, especially since she’s anorexic.

The race itself was an overall good experience. She broke well. Unfortunately, all the early speed was surrounding her right out of the gate. By the time Palace made it to the first turn she was getting squeezed from both sides (don’t think thoughts like that about our horse). She abruptly slowed her pace for a split second and fell back in the pack, which cost her valuable ground. The jockey quickly repositioned and she found her form again. Once she saw a little daylight she turned on the afterburners and closed impressively. She ran down the leaders rather easily but just ran out of time.

I’m still a little shaken by how much her first race mimicked me in the bedroom.

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After a year of horse ownership, Team Cool & Tough’s very own filly, Palace on a Lake, will run today.

I’m trying to make that sound as definite as possible seeing that the last time she was scheduled to race the trainer scratched her due to morning sickness (or a head cold or something equally lame), and then from there he decided to send her on a six month vacation to Florida so she could “learn how to be a horse again.”

(Editor’s Note: In case you’re new to the site and the trials and tribulations of Palace on a Lake we recommend visiting this portion of our archives and starting at the bottom.)

I still don’t understand how a horse forgets it is a horse. The whole thing is perplexing. Are horses like middle school kids that go through identity crises? Was our Palace going through a rebellious Goth stage? Hard to say.

Regardless, as long as she takes her cold medicine, Palace will be running today, July 1st, 2008, in the 6th race at Delaware Park. Post time for the race is 3PM EST. She will start from the 10 position.

If you want to watch the race go to ESPN.com, then:

• Click on the OTHER link along the top of the site.
• Select HORSE RACING from the drop down list.
• Click on LIVE RACING along the top of the horse racing page.
• Click on DELAWARE on the left side.

The overnight line on Palace is 10/1.

Does that read like “Cha-ching! Cha-ching!” to anyone else?

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Having to go out to dinner with his wife’s friend and her husband is the latest installment of the trials and tribulations of the Married Guy…

What Married Guy Says: “Really glad we could get together tonight.”

What Married Guy Means: “I can’t even tell you how much I’d rather spend my Friday night on my couch in my underwear.”

Means: “Steve, you fucking loser, I’m being polite. If you give me an answer longer than two sentences I swear I’ll drag you in the men’s room and introduce your face to porcelain.”

Says: “The portions here are good sized so we can probably hold off on appetizers.”

Means: “I need to get away from you weirdos as soon as humanly possible.”

Says: “Yeah, I thought about going with the raspberry martini too but then decided I was just in a beer mood.”

Means: “Steve, that is the GD gayest drink order I have ever seen.”

Says: “No, we haven’t seen Fool’s Gold but we’ve heard good things. We’ll have to check it out.”

Means: “It’s people like you that make me hate so much.”

Says: “I’m pretty sure that’s a type of fish.”

Means: “I’m pretty sure that’s a type of fish you fucking moron.”

Says: “We’ll eventually have kids but it’s still way down the road.”

Means: “My pull out technique is flawless.”

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