InTheEventOf... owing an unground thug a substantial amount of money

We all make mistakes. Maybe you were caught up in the whirlwind of excitement around a sports game, or you've had a rotten run of luck on the ponies. Whatever the case me be you've found yourself up to you eyeballs in losses and your bookie has promised to break your thumbs if you don't settle up. InTheEventOf... owing an unground thug a substantial amount of money you must realize there are only a few options left which gets you out without broken thumbs and will get the bulls eye off your back.

So what can you do to save yourself the trouble of losing your most important digits? Well here is a list of 5 things that could help you overcome your unwelcome new best friends and the obvious burden of this gambling debt over your head.

1. Take out a loan - If you haven't completely screwed up and destroyed your credit already you might be able to convince a bank to give you a loan for the amount of money you owe to the sketchy guy with the baseball bat outside your door. At least a bank wont resort to violence and often will accept payment plans helping you get out of debt.
2. Talk to family - If you've destroyed your credit and already have a huge amount of debt with banks as well as the less forgivable gangsters you might talk to family. Those family tends to not want to help out people in your situation as the likelihood that you'd repay them is pretty much zero. (at least in their eyes)
3. Call the police - You might be able to convince the police that you are in danger and need protection. They might do something but, they are limited in what they can do and this might piss off the people hunting you down enough to speed up the hit.
4. Change your name - If you are no longer John Doe but Jon Doh you might be able to trick your enemies off your scent. This is something that could end up becoming very difficult and the other problem is you'll always be looking over your shoulder wondering if they've caught a whiff.
5. Leave the country - Pack your bags and run. The world is a big place and there's 6.5 billion faces out there. If you run and leave everything behind you may be able to start a life somewhere else. Depending on the amount of debt you've racked up it might end up being less worth it for these people to track you down and then you'll be left alone. At least as long as you don't bump into them somewhere down the road of life.

Of course illegal gambling is a good way to end up on the short end of the stick, even if you win, you could end up with broken thumbs as these people are not in it to be giving you money. The odds are in their favor, just like a casino in vegas, some people get lucky but most will lose. The problem is that when dealing with underground bookies you tend to find that they are less restricted by the law and will confront a frequent winner and punish you for being lucky.

The best thing to do is avoid gambling all together as this way you will most likely have more money than when you started and you wont have people looking to bust your kneecaps with a baseball bat. I hope you enjoyed this weeks installment of InTheEventOf... please share my blog with all your friends on Facebook, Twitter or by word of mouth I appreciate every visitor I receive. 

Check out some of these other popular InTheEventOf... Posts

• Sex Crazed Psycho
• Blind Date From Hell
• Dating a Cheater

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InTheEventOf... Hurricane Earl

Special InTheEventOf... post today in honor of the storm with it's eye set on the east coast of the United States.

Earl is a scary looking storm. On paper, 135mph winds, torrential rains, damaging storm surge. Hurricane's in general are a force not to be reckoned with and Earl sitting at a category 3 is definitely a scary storm. While the track of Earl is still not set in stone it does appear that he will be staying off the shoreline and therefore saving most of us from harm's way.

In southern New England we are not strangers to hurricanes though they are also not a very common thing to be seen. In fact the last official hurricane to make landfall in the area was Hurricane Bob in 1991 almost 20 years ago! So to prepare ourselves for Earl, and any other Hurricane that sets it's eye on us we must take a few precautions to which I will refer mostly to common sense and a sprinkling of humor.

InTheEventOf... Hurricane Earl

1. Stock up on supplies such as batteries, water, and food.
2. Stay focused and aware of your surroundings.
3. Don't go play in the rain (it's not one of those kinds of storms)
4. Stay away from the ocean, the waves are big, mean and will kill you.
5. If the authorities are telling you to evacuate the area, listen, they are doing this for a reason
6. Don't climb a tree, though it may look like fun to be blown back and forth in the branches, if the tree snaps you will fall and hit your head and die.
7. The storm is not over when the eye passes over you. This is a tease, in fact prepare for the worst of the storm in a few minutes! RUN!
8. If you have a generator you are a very lucky person.
9. Get board games and other things that don't require power. (Unless you fall into the group of people mentioned in #8)
10. Remember at least it isn't snow.

In all seriousness though hurricane's are extremely dangerous especially when they reach strengths like Earl and every precaution should be taken. Thankfully, it does look like Earl will be giving us just a glancing blow and therefore should not be too hard to deal with. We here in New England may not get many hurricanes but we sure do get a lot of Nor'Easters and in all honesty 3+ft of snow is much harder to deal with than a fast moving hurricane that is staying 20-50 miles off shore.

For those of you on the east coast - stay safe and enjoy falling asleep to the rain and the wind!

InTheEventOf... coming in contact with a person of fame

We all have our favorite celebrities, those people who we follow on Twitter, the ones we will watch any movie they're in just because they are in it. Of course even if you're not meeting your favorite celebrity it's still something of an event when you do come face to face with a famous person.

Some people will completely lose control of themselves and start screaming, fainting or even just talking gibberish, "O. M. G. That's ughhawlteja What ok I'm gonna pass ou-" *THUD*.

Well here on this week's InTheEventOf... I am going to try to prevent the incoherent gibberish as well as saving you a trip to the nearest MRI to check your head from that thud.

InTheEventOf... coming in contact with a person of fame you want to make sure first and foremost you keep your composure. Have you ever seen news reels of girls going nuts over Justin Bieber at a concert? They aren't even talking to him!

5 things to do in order to avoid being a complete fool when meeting a celebrity

1. Composure -  You do have this ability even, when you're extremely excited. Don't start screaming at the top of your lungs, celebrities have ears just the same as you and me.
2. Restraint -  Restraint. Most people whether they be famous or not do not like to be groped by strangers. Try not to run up and jump on the celebrity this is a good way to get yourself hurt, through out or jailed for a night. 
3. Acknowledge - Acknowledge the fact that a celebrity is human, just like you and me, they are real people with real lives. If you manage to do this and bring them down to a less 'god-like' status you'll be more able to control yourself when meeting them.
4. Listen - Remember to listen. One of the hardest things to do when meeting a celebrity is to actually pay attention to what is happening around you, or even what they are saying. You're so excited you're conversing with this person that you're not actually paying attention to what he/she is saying and therefore you're wasting your time.
5. Converse - Going along with listening you will want to be able to form words of your own. Make sure you don't look like an idiot and completely freeze up and go mute. Make conversation, ask questions (good ones) and go on your merry way. 

If you can successfully meet a celebrity without the word vomit into hitting the floor routine you will be one step closer to getting invited into the after party at the oscars! 

Please feel free to share any of your celebrity encounters in the comments section. How did you fair? Where you able to make conversation or did you end up like my overly dramatic imagined example?

Image: barunpatro

3 Ways to Save Money

Why would anyone want to just let money sit around and do nothing when you could be spending it on a trip to Aruba or this new Samsung 3D TVon amazon. I understand in our very capitalist driven world spending money seems to come second nature to us. We gawk at new technology, flock to sales in throngs, and all but trip over each other during the holidays. So how can we teach ourselves to save money?

The first thing we must do is note that it depends on what kind of saving we want to do - there are three main reasons we'd want to save money. Short term, medium term or long term. I will explain the difference of these types of saving and how each one requires a different technique.

Short Term

Short term saving is reserved for that new 55" TV or a vacation to a tropical island. It is something of a frivolous kind of saving. That does not mean it is not an important kind of saving.

Typically short term saving is done in order to meet a goal within a year or less. Mostly just putting extra money aside until you can justify handing the kids over to your mother in law and sending the pets to a kennel for a week. 

To save for short term goals requires the most discipline. This is because the only way you can save short term is by saving cold hard cash. You can't lock it away, you can forget about it, it's there and it's accessible. Some people will put it in a savings account that requires a signature to withdraw thus making it more of a process to get the money out. Others will keep cash stuffed under their mattress. Whatever works for you, just remember you can't spend it, you must add to it, and you must keep your targets reasonable. 

Medium Term

When we have a slightly longer outlook say 2-3 years from now we can justify trading stocks (safe ones) or better yet locking your money up in a high interest account or CD. By doing this and if you make it a routine to continue to add to this sum, by 2-3 years you will be more than happy with what you have saved. 

Medium term goals can be things like remodeling the kitchen or repairing a roof. These are things that you will need a large amount of money for and you can (and should) plan ahead for them. It is much better to have this kind of a plan than having the alternative happen which would be celebrating your white Christmas with snow on your Christmas tree in your living room because your roof has a giant gaping hole because it could not support Santa.

Long Term

Saving for retirement is the easiest thing to do. You set up an auto-withdraw from your paycheck put it in a 401k and never think about it. Even under bad market conditions the regular injection of cash each pay cycle will add up over the 20-30+ years of your working life. Starting as soon as you can afford to will enable you to have a happy and enjoyable retirement filled with fishing and golf and trips to Florida. 

To Wrap It Up

I know saving money is not the easiest thing to do, especially when you're young. It is so easy to fall into the I Need That Shiny New Tech Toy routine and burn a hole in your wallet. Start taking responsibility for your spending early and you'll be amazed at how much you can save.

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A World Without the Web!?

These last five days with only my iPhone as an access point to the rest of the world I started to wonder - What if I didn't even have that? How would my world change with zero access to the internet? I would tell people that for the last five days I've been without internet but, in reality it was just five days without access via my computer at my house. I still could log on and check email, Facebook and Twitter using my phone. I could still visit websites like MSN and CNBC and other appropriate sites via my work computer so I really was not internetless. So what if I was? What if we all were?

If I, personally, was the only one without internet I think that I would quickly become reliant on TV, newspapers, radio and telephones for news, information and communication. The internet truly has made us lazy. We can get all of these things and more by staring at a screen in the comfort of our own homes. Without internet I feel like we would have more time for other things in our lives. Does internet really make things easier for us to get to or is it a situation where we are in information overload and we can not focus on the things that need to get done? Check out my post Are We Spending too Much Time on the Internet for some information regarding current internet usage levels and how they've grown over the recent years.

The scarier thought though is what would happen if it was a global outage? If everyone on the planet could no longer access the world wide web? No longer trade stocks online, no longer bank, or pay bills over the web? What would become of the planet? Could we go back to the dark ages without any death and destruction? Would planes fall from the sky?

I think that a world without internet would indeed have a devastating effect on our global economy, our social lives, our safety and our sanity. It's sad to see how much we truly rely on the invisible waves that send information from Japan to Boston in nanoseconds, but we truly do rely on this technology. Without it we would surly fall into chaos.

I know most of the people reading this blog are either bloggers themselves, people stumbling upon it on StumbleUpon or people referred from Twitter or Facebook. With this knowledge I'd say it would be safe to assume that the vast majority of this blog's readers are frequent internet users. With this in mind I would like to ask my readers a question - What's the longest you've ever gone without ANY access to the internet in recent memory? How long do you really think you could go without it before you started to crave it again?

With that I'd like to just say it's good to be back behind the keyboard with an active internet connection. I missed it indeed and I still had "some" access to it. I can't even imagine life without it.

Image: wryls