We Don't Walk Slow

About Tom Stortz

Enjoying my last few responsibility free years left.

Katy Perry Save Me

Blog traffic has been down. Save your breath, it’s a shocker to us all. I’m fairly certain that this website has been the best it has ever been with regards to content and appearance. What’s happened is I’m not getting off traffic from the Storage Wars Brandi Passante or the pornstar Madison Ivy. These types of boosts help the numbers. As is, I get about 100 people a day in direct traffic which isn’t bad but it’s not earth shattering. Everything is still going to plan though but expect me to up the game in upcoming posts. Let’s start with Katy Perry hanging out with celebrities.

I’d volunteer for a 3some

Katy and Anna Kendrick boob grab

Best boobs in the business in this picture

Famous green dress with Ellen gawking

Katy looks smashed

Katy with the nose pick on ultra conservative Taylor Swift. Nice pair!

Katy w/ One Direction

They’d be a good couple. Miley the dude obviously.

By Tom Stortz|2016-10-28T15:26:42-04:00May 24th, 2014|Celeb|0 Comments

Avoid the Worst Human Feelings

The Worst Human Feelings

There are times in life where being alive sucks. We live for the ups and deal with the downs. Without ever experiencing the downs, you wouldn’t know how good the ups can be. Here are a few downs in life that should be avoided at all costs.

ATM Pain

The Roulette wheel just struck red and you were certain you were using your Jedi mind trick to force push it into black. Adios last 100 dollar bill. Moths just flew out of your wallet and the strip of your ATM card has been through hell and back. It’s 2am, you’re 12 beers deep, and now have to stumble to the ATM to get more gambling money. You go through the process, request money, the machine starts processing your request…..and comes back with the message, “You’ve reached your daily limit. Not dispensing money.” Heartbreak.

This pain hits on about 4 key levels of disappointment.

The fact that you hit your daily limit means that you’ve already lost whatever your bank allows you to withdraw in a day. Losing money is always a horrible feeling.
The ATM is preventing you from getting more money which means you can’t gamble anymore and the night is essentially over. I’ve seen people draw against their credit cards and this is always hitting near rock bottom.
Problem two about not getting money is that you can’t even get money for normal services like food or taxi.
You feel like such a degenerate that the machine had to cut you off. Anyone around you sees that you can’t get money and your prestige sinks in everyone’s mind.

Sports Errors

Barbosa of the 1950 Brazil World Cup team

Have you heard of Moacyr Barbosa Nascimento? He was the goalie for the 1950 World Cup Brazil soccer team. In 50′ Brazil was hosting the World Cup and had built a new stadium to accommodate the huge crowd. The city was pumped because they were the favorite to win and it was their chance to show the world their domination. In the final game against Uruguay, goalkeeper Barbosa let in 2 goals and Brazil suffered defeat 2-1. He was forever shunned and hated in Brazil for giving up “soft” goals. This isn’t fair.

Bill Buckner. Chris Webber. Scott Norwood. The names are endless for players’s mistakes made in sports that cost their team championships. It’s horrible because FANS place the entire blame on this one person for the team losing. This player is saddled with this mistake for the rest of their lives. I get disappointed when I make an error in an intramural game, I can only imagine doing it on a world scale and having people hate me for it. LACES OUT!

The Blackout Conversation

“Last night was crazy, huh?”

“Yep. Pretty wild.”

“Yea…we were all pretty shit faced, right?”

“Haha, yeah man, you were completely gone.”

“Heh….yeah, I didn’t do anything stupid did I?”

I’ve been there countless times where I wake up in my bed and have no idea how I got there. My head is aching and I’m happy to be alive and awake. My mind immediately goes into the last waking memory I have. I know it’s trouble when the last thing I remember is not going to the bar when I know the plan was to go to the bar. Blacking out is easily one of the scariest moments because ANYTHING can happen. You can’t dismiss any possibility. It’s one thing when you only embarrass yourself, but when you start affecting other people’s world’s with your antics, this is when the shame really starts to hit. Never fun.

By Tom Stortz|2014-05-23T10:48:13-04:00May 23rd, 2014|My Life|0 Comments

Reddit Delivers News Fast

I know not everyone uses Reddit but the more I use it, the more I believe that it delivers news faster than any other website. Essentially people > press in terms of speed. Reddit is a site where its users post everything and anything. From sports, to earth pics, to pet pics, to NSFW gifs, it delivers interesting content at speeds faster than normal and this blog is proof.

On Tuesday morning I watched and posted a video of Jack Nicklaus sinking an 102′ putt back in 2010. I had seen the video on Reddit’s front page and figured why not share something pretty cool. Unbeknownst to me, this video started making its rounds around the internet and was actually picked up by more reputable sites for news. Here is Yahoo posting the story 17 hours ago. Here is BarStool posting it sometime last night.

The video has since been removed from YouTube but I hope you see the point here. My shitty ass site posted a story that was considered material for much larger sites like Yahoo and Barstool who actually have a staff to find news. My post was more than 24 hours ahead of them. Why did this happen? Because I read it on Reddit. This site is a foremost information hub. If you don’t Reddit, you are late to the news.

By Tom Stortz|2014-05-22T09:55:16-04:00May 22nd, 2014|My Brain|0 Comments

Altra Instinct 2.0 – Pass or Fail?

Buying a Running Shoe

Yesterday I decided that I could use a new pair of running shoes and headed to Born To Run in SpringHouse, PA. I’ve known Hillary for many years and like keeping the business local instead of penny pinching online. Plus I like to try before I buy.

Brooks Ghost 5

I’m not your typical runner and have had various issues with shoes in the past. Every step I take running is on my toes. What this does is creates immense friction under the balls of my toes and blisters begin. The last 2 purchases I made were Brooks Ghost 5’s which are a heavier shoe that does a decent job keeping my feet safe.

I walked into the store with an open mind and no real budget because it’s an item I’ll be using often. I do some quick browsing and check out the new Ghost’s and the Mizuno Wave Enigma 3. I’ve pretty much eliminated Saucony and Nike from my shoe buying due to bad experiences. I had an employee bring me out 11’s of the new Brooks Ghost 6 and wasn’t thrilled with the color choice but they fit like I was used to. As I was walking around, a representative from the company Altra asks if he can help me out. I give him some quick details about my style and what I was looking for and he shows me Altra’s equivalent.

I’ve never heard of Altra before and when I first saw the shoe I thought it was out of the space program. It has a wide front and the sole is very flat with no arch on the bottom nose. It looked peculiar but if a shoe could prevent me from getting blisters, I was interested. The rep said that the company was from California and does well on the West Coast but has little base in the East. I tried on one shoe of the Altra Instinct 2.0 and compared one of a Mizuno Wave Enigma 3. Both shoes felt nice but it’s impossible to know what to expect out of a running shoe without running in it. After some more discussion I decided to take a flyer on the Altra and purchase it. I figured worst case scenario was that I could try it out and then complain that it wasn’t what I expected and go from there.

Running an Altra

I was quite anxious to go for a run in these new shoes because they were unlike anything I’ve tried before. My first impression of the shoe out of the box is that it’s unique looking but the color scheme is nice. It’s not too bright or off putting, it blends well. I put on the shoe and it fit like a slipper. The shoe laces were a tad short and thin for my liking. I immediately noticed the difference in weight with these being 9.5 oz compared to my 11.3 oz Ghosts. With everything being set, I decided to head to the Ben Franklin bridge and give the shoes a workout.

A few steps in I was feeling the additional room in the front and thought it was comfortable. My feet didn’t feel squished and had some room to breathe. The sole is very flat so I noticed that my toe running was landing me further back on the mid sole compared to what I’m used to. Everything felt fine and I knew the run I was doing was going to test the shoe further. The Ben Franklin Bridge is about a mile long bridge with a slight incline for the first half and then slight decline for the second half. The downhill incline would be a perfect test because my feet will usually heat up from a half mile of a pushing pace downhill.

While picking it up on the downhill, I found out that although my feet would heat up (less so than in the Ghost), if I wanted to back off a bit on my toes, I’d land in the middle and it would give my feet some cooling off. Normally, when my shoes would get too hot, I’d have to start running heel to toe and this was a refreshing surprise because I lost little speed when I would back off.

I made sure I ran hard on both parts of the downhill and could find no faults with the shoe. They felt light and I felt like I could pick it up when I wanted to. The stability wasn’t as high as what I was used to but I don’t see this as an issue. When I took them off after the run everything felt normal which is exactly what I want and I saw no exterior issues with the shoe. Obviously this was only a 4 mile run but I’m looking forward to putting on some more distance and then working them on the track. At an $105.00 dollar price tag, I have found no faults so far.

If you like running and are new to my site, you might like to read about my Broad St Run Experience.

By Tom Stortz|2014-05-21T18:46:44-04:00May 21st, 2014|Running|0 Comments

Who Am I?

By Tom Stortz|2014-05-21T14:44:06-04:00May 21st, 2014|Celeb|5 Comments

Drugs + Media = Ratings

Drugs, Alcohol, and Media

It has occurred to me how sad our society behaves when it comes to drugs and alcohol. Drugs are addictive. People don’t act like themselves when they are on drugs. They are still known as that person, but they essentially have an alter ego. Sober-self vs Drug-self. I believe the media does a horrendous job of dealing with drug induced people. Media coverage is constant during breakdowns and this just exacerbates the problem. The media may report it as erratic behavior but the reality is a serious drug problem. Read on.

Lindsay Lohan

No drugs

I think she is a prime example of developing a drug problem and having the media follow her every move which eventually leads to destruction. This is a great TrueBoob (NSFW) of her physical appearance throughout her career. She rose to the tippy top of actress stardom after Mean Girls. The movie had a hot cast, she lead them all, and won America’s heart. She was the Queen Bee. Then she was introduced to cocaine? and probably got hooked from there. I read a quote that said she only tried it 4 or 5 times and I think she was leaving off the hundreds.

Drugs

She lost her pure figure and ran rampant with irresponsible behavior like drunk driving, jewellery thefts, and tweeting topless pictures. What did the media do? They covered every single minute. She’d go to rehab and then comeback with the paparazzi following every move. This isn’t a typical lifestyle for anyone. She has unlimited access and developed a serious addiction because of the people surrounding her, poor decision making, and drug intake. Read this comment and tell me she was ok:

When Oprah asked what the big difference was this time, Lindsay was quick to say “Not taking Adderall, that’s a big deal.”

Guaranteed she used Adderall a lot. A real lot.

Ryan Dunn

Ryan Dunn was a professional. You can be certain he had driven drunk 100x before this incident. Speeding while intoxicated was second nature to him. He accrued 23 driving citations throughout his life, 10 were for speeding and careless driving, and three more were for driving with a suspended license. Among those, 90 percent of which ended in guilty pleas, was a 2005 DUI arrest. On June 11, 2011 he crashed his Porsche 911 killing his 30 year old passenger as well as himself when they struck a tree. He was driving 130-140 miles per hour. He tweeted earlier in the night a picture while at Barnaby’s in West Chester and that he was drinking. Final details came in that he had a .19 ABV which was twice the legal limit. A quote by the manager Jim Obrien, “He didn’t seem to be intoxicated at the time he left,” O’Brien said. “Ryan was not a hardcore drinker, at least not when he was here.” Bullshit.

Can’t even tell it was a car.

The other thing to consider was it more than just alcohol? Pain killers, coke, or any other number of substances could come into play. Stories are not created most of the time unless drugs are involved. A man finishing his work day, having a drink from the bar, and then driving the speed limit home doesn’t make the headlines. This story never becomes a story if drugs are not involved. It puts the media in an incredibly awkward place because it is their job to report news, even when it is caused by their favorite, unsaid, form of news, drugs.

Britney Spears

Britney Spears is a phenomenal example of someone who got it together and who the media stopped covering. Baby Hit Me One More Time and the school girl outfit was every high school boy’s dream. She was the girl counterpart to the Backstreet Boys in the late 90’s, early 2000’s. Her early career hit a pinnacle and a few years later drugs started her downturn. When a career blows up like this it’s impossible to prepare for it. A Midwest girl all of a sudden is the most popular person on the planet and the world is at her fingertips. Drugs get experimented with and next thing you know they become a way of life. This causes irrational behavior like shaving your head and bizarre marriages and the media eats it up and makes money off it.

Who is actually worse in this scenario, the media covering it or the people buying the information? I’d have to give equal blame to both. A depressed girl gets caught up in drugs and eventually self destructs. Does the media back off because drugs are carrying these stories? I don’t think so. They only report the behavior. Major applause though to Britney. I’m amazed she has been irrelevant for the last few years but I suppose that’s because she became boring and sober.

By Tom Stortz|2016-10-28T15:25:53-04:00May 21st, 2014|Celeb|0 Comments

Casual 102′ Putt by the Golden Bear

How does this happen? The odds of this have to be through the roof. A 74 year old man, *arguably the best player to ever play the game*, walks up to an 102 ft putt and sinks it like it’s just another day. To give you an idea of how hard this is:

PGA’s Shot Tracker reveals that tour players on average make:

99% of putts from 3 feet and in
69% of 6-foot putts
54% of 8-foot putts
31% of putts between 10 and 15 feet

I also found it interesting that Tiger Woods and the Golden bear are at the exact same point in their careers with regard to Major tournaments won. They are both 38 and have 14 major wins. Chance that Tiger gets to 18 to match Jack? I’d give it 15%.

Making putts like this and being a boss are how you get a drink named after you.

By Tom Stortz|2014-05-20T11:46:23-04:00May 20th, 2014|Sports|0 Comments

Will I Write Better?

I finished a quick read by Neville Medhora titled, “This Book Will Teach You How to Write Better“. It was a mere $2.99 through my Kindle and I figured I couldn’t get worse. In 56 pages guidelines were set on creating text that people want to read. The book steers away from proper English tactics and delves into what makes real people react. It’s refreshing to get a perspective that goes outside the way that was taught in school and doesn’t relate to real life. Would I have bolded that if I didn’t just read his book? Probably not, but a point was made about style and presentation and its impact. Here are a few other tidbits.

Nobody cares about you, they only care about themselves.
Write like you are talking to a friend in a coffee shop.
Write Funny. Write Informative. Just not boring.
Delete anything that is fucking boring.

Piece by piece

That’s it. I’m hoping a few of these simplistic tips enhance my writing and make this blog easier to read and more entertaining. Over the long run it feels like I improve on various aspects little by little. One year I’ll improve the aesthetic look of the site and posts. The next year I’ll change posts that I used to make about my life to a more informative, boring read. My plan is that my posts will start being informative and entertaining for the people reading the posts.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and the blogging life doesn’t come easy. 5 years later I’ve still yet to earn a penny but I think that proves that I don’t do it for the money. This blog is a vault, time capsule if you will, of information that my brain will look at when I’m 75 and think, “yeah, that’s how my brain worked when I was 30.” Invaluable information stored through hostmonster. Amazing it only costs 100 bucks a year.

By Tom Stortz|2014-05-19T23:17:16-04:00May 19th, 2014|My Brain|1 Comment

5 Helpful Tips to Not Be an Idiot

No one wants to be an idiot but most people are, myself included. It’s unavoidable because unless you are understanding time travel, curing cancer, or making other significant impacts on society, you are pretty much an idiot. Wake up, work, sleep, and repeat. What type of a person thinks doing this for 40 years is a great way of living? Only an idiot. With this macro understanding, it’s important for other humans not to be able to identify you as a moron from the micro viewpoint. Meaning that when they talk to you, you must leave some doubt in their mind whether you are the next Einstein.

[dropcap background=”yes” color=”#333333″]”Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt”?[/dropcap]

5. Confusion is your friend

The smartest people are the ones who can explain something in as few words and as simply as possible. This is hard for a simpleton. This is why it is important to disguise statements by throwing around a lot confusing lingo. Using double negatives and obscure references is a good start. We can’t not travel to Jupiter’s moon Euripides. It requires thought to figure out a sentence like this. Most people don’t like to think so they’ll ignore it if they don’t get it immediately. Also, if it gets so confusing, many people may even mistake it for being advanced.

4. Pick friends less or equally smart as you

You always want to be the smartest person in the group. This way less intelligent members can’t question your mistakes as easily. If you are in a group of Harvard grads discussing a solution to a problem, they have already solved it by the time you even know it started. There is no fun to this situation because you are always being over-minded and no one takes you seriously. Why would Jerry be friends with George? Ren with Stimpy? Chandler with Joey? You think this is by accident? They knew what they were doing.

3. Make Facts Up

On Friday night we were by the Delaware river and Jeff said, “they named the state after it.” I had no idea whether this was true or not but I agreed to it because that’s what people do when they don’t know whether something is true. It’s simple to refute actual facts but much more challenging to find proper info on made up facts. Not only are they hard to verify, but you get an edge up because, if you are good at creating them, there is no way the person you are talking to knows your made up fact. Uh, the house was built in 1825 by General Custer…

2. yoYO Ah’m Daa next $hAkEspEaR

Writing like an uneducated person typically makes you look like an uneducated person. I can’t think of one person who spells a word with 7 m’s that I thought was way over my head from an intellect standpoint. This is one of those situations where if you don’t want people to judge you, don’t give them any ammunition. It’s fairly obvious that no one expects a perfect sentence structure in a text message but some effort should be shown.

1. Know you are idiot

The best for last. The only people who are truly stupid, are the ones who think they are smart. It’s impossible to know about everything that people have verified as true let alone all the unknown mysteries the world has to offer. The only time anyone would ever think you are dumb, is if you act smarter than you are. Unless of course you really are just dumb and then it’s probably best to admit your dumb and that would be considered smart. The only times I ever feel really dumb is when I talk like I know what I’m talking about.

By Tom Stortz|2014-05-19T20:18:32-04:00May 19th, 2014|My Brain|0 Comments

Getting Old and Worse at Sports

Not catching this ball

Anyone that is older than me will likely say, “you’re not that old.” 30 years old isn’t that old when compared to an entire life but the body doesn’t reach its peak at the midway point. What I’ve noticed is that I’m getting worse in just about anything I do that involves hand eye coordination or moving.

There are professional athletes who play well into their 30’s and can still be productive but usually not at as high a level as their 20’s. Isiah Thomas retired at the ripe age of 32. Barry Sanders at 30. Even MJ retired at 30 (the first time). The reason athletes retire is because they can’t play at the level they once played at. When you don’t feel like you are effective anymore, you give a reason like I’m too old and retire. This helps your mind and is an excuse for being worse than you once were.

[dropcap background=”yes” color=”#333333″]Just remember when you’re over the hill, you begin to pick up speed.[/dropcap]

I look back at my youth and was once a pretty sound basketball player. This clip has me scoring 6 points in a quarter back when I was 13. I don’t even score 6 points in a game nowadays. When I was young, and admittedly would play way more basketball than I do now, I would go as far and say I was actually good at basketball. I play today and my arms feel like they are the wrong size for my body and the ball feels like a balloon.

This is for a number of reasons one of which I already mentioned, I don’t play as often. Which leads to the obvious question, are your skills declining or are you not practicing enough? Like many answers to questions, both. Here’s the kicker, I don’t practice anything! Aside from playing a lot of beer pong throughout my 20’s, I don’t take any activity seriously. This in turn has left me with a feeling of uselessness in most everything I do.

Games are all the same. You start off learning the game. Then you start practicing the game. Then you start playing the game at as high a level as you can. I’ve played hundreds of games and what happens time after time is you plateau in the game and then comes a crucial point where you either 1) devote more time to start mastering the nuances of the game or 2) quit. I quit. I like to think of myself as a jack of all trades but master of none. Meaning that I’m respectable at most things, but am never the best.

In a society where people only care about winning, it makes getting worse at things suck. Am I exaggerating a bit in this post? Yes. I guarantee if I wanted to concentrate on shooting a basketball for 40 hours a week, I would improve and this post would have no meaning whatsoever. The point is though that when you get older, life gets in the way. You slave away at a job for 40 hours and leisure activities fade. Next thing you know you’re 50 years old wondering where time went. Is there a point to this post? I don’t know. I think it’s even though you suck, you should still have fun doing it. Unfortunately sucking is frustrating as hell and makes people make blog posts.

By Tom Stortz|2014-05-19T08:49:50-04:00May 19th, 2014|Sports|4 Comments