Monday, September 29, 2008

Baseball Travelin' 2008

Three parks in two weekends. The last day game ever at Yankee Stadium. The first big league homer for a top catching prospect. And the Phillies clinching yet another division title following yet another epic Mets collapse.

And I still haven't gotten the photos up on Flickr because I'm out of upload for the month. At this rate, I'm going to have to go pro sooner rather than later.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Secret Agent Man

Join the Secret Service for a life of adventure, valiantly protecting the life of the President and various other world leaders.

Oh, wait.

Rewrite: Join the Secret Service to dig nickels out of a swamp. Hazardous duty pay for each one you have to clean blood and brain matter off of.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

I Got Your F***ing NewsBuster Right Here

I'm a big fan of NewsBusters.org, the blog that exposes liberal bias in the mainstream media (disclosure: one of my closest friends is a former writer for the site; unfortunately, I couldn't find a link to his past columns in a 15 second search). In that spirit, I present this article from Slate (a subsite of MSN): "What's the Matter With Canada? [subtitle:] How the world's nicest country turned mean." They flat-out equate conservatism with "meanness". It's one step shy of putting a thumb on the tip of their nose, wiggling their fingers, and making a fart noise with their tongue out.

Read it (by "it", I mean the language) and weep, folks:

"After decades of encouraging countries to increase their foreign-aid spending, Canada cut its own, from 0.34 percent of GDP in 2005 to just 0.2 percent last year."

Because in a period of economic downturn, it's irresponsible to conserve your national wealth to help your own citizens. Assholes.

"Long a beacon of human rights, Ottawa announced last fall that it would stop advocating on behalf of Canadians sentenced to death in other countries."

Because convicted murderers and rapists, in the age of DNA, when there's seldom any doubt of guilt at all, let alone reasonable doubt, deserve such consideration. Douchebags.

"The Conservatives may not represent the views of most Canadians, but with four parties fighting for the left-wing vote, the Conservatives might win simply by sliding up the middle."

Because the middle consists of ignorant hayseeds whose opinions shouldn't count because they're wrong, wrong, wrong, even if they're in the majority, because they're wrong, right? Dipshits.

I've been done with MSNBC ever since they caved to the vocal minority and cancelled Imus, but I'm now seriously considering being done with MSN altogether, if this is the kind of "news" that they put forth. I didn't stumble across this on a deep search--the article was linked right off their front page tonight. These are the kind of shenanigans that make me think long and hard about changing my start page to ESPN. On all of my computers. And in an election year, that's just sad.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Oh Hell No

I've played Half-Life. I've seen how this story ends.

I've been having trouble sleeping lately as it is. This is going to make me an absolute insomniac.

We've pretty much gotten rid of Castro, and now apparently Kim Jong-Il, and for what? Just in time for the world to collapse in a resonance cascade series of black holes because some egghead forgot to carry a one somewhere.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Liveblog: NFL 2008 Season Opener

Thought I'd try a liveblog here tonight as I get ready to watch the Giants-Redskins opener here. For the uninitiated, that means I'll be posting a series of random and increasingly incoherent thoughts in this post as the game progresses. You can keep hitting refresh for my expert commentary. Newest update goes under this drivel, but above the previous updates.


0:00 1-0 record, 1-0 division record. Not a bad start to the year. I hope Kiwanuka is OK--he got hurt on the last play and NBC cut over to the convention before they could find out how he is. Guess I'll flip over to ESPN News for Coughlin's press conference. Good night, everyone!

2:00 warning Jim Zorn is completely lost here. I've seen Pop Warner coaches manage the clock better. We got this, boys. We got this.

5:51 Same score since the second quarter, and Tuck just made a FANTASTIC stop following the late hit penalty. My confidence is returning.

10:53 The "meatatarian" Wendy's commercial almost makes me want to become a vegetarian. Almost.

12:55 We're up by 2 scores in the 4th quarter. If you'd offered me that deal at kickoff, I'd have taken it. Offense could have been better, but what the hell.

4th qtr, 14:18 The offensive line is doing their job. If the defense keeps doing theirs, we might just be able to run out the clock on this sucker.

2:14 Long injury time out. Fortunately, it's Fred Smoot and not one of the Giants.

6:30 A promising drive ends with Eli getting picked on a bad overthrow of Boss. And all three of my fantasy teams drop two points. Freaking awesome.

8:33 Three plays later and the Skins are punting, proving my histrionics premature as usual. Pretty literate sentence from me, but I'm only on my third beer since kickoff.

9:32 It's all falling apart as Portis busts off a 20+ yard run. If the Giants lose, this is where it all went to hell.

10:14 Giants' first punt. Not too shabby, but like I said down there, we need touchdowns!

12:50 Wow, he caught that with his yambag. Good thing Tom didn't try to challenge that (not that he would have with 4th down coming up.)

3rd qtr, 15:00 Giants website finally has a chat room back on their website, after a long hiatus. It's not the haven for knowledgeable football fans that it used to be. I'm disappointed.

Halftime and I'm nervous as can be. Taking a break from the liveblog.

0:13 16-7. One bad series pretty much negates a half that couldn't have gone better up till the two minute warning.

1:04 This isn't funny any more. If the Skins get a touchdown here, it'll be eerily close, despite the Giants' first half dominance on both sides of the ball.

1:10 Mark this down: Jason Campbell finally completes his first pass. If you have him on your fantasy team, YOU LOSE!

1:52 The Redskins finally caught a break on poor kickoff coverage by the Giants' special teams. That looked like Fassel's kick coverage teams, not Coughlin's.

2:25 No way was a run play the right call there. Now we have to settle for another FG, and a long one for Carney at that. He got it, though--16-0 G-Men.

4:52 Madden: "Laron Landry is not going to tackle [Brandon Jacobs] high again". Translation: Laron Landry is scared shitless of Brandon Jacobs.

11:03 Giants need to get some touchdowns on these long drives. If they're settling for 3 against the Redskins, what are they going to do against a real opponent?

2nd qtr, 12:43 These Coors Light "press conference remix" commercials are just about played out.

End Q1: The scoreboard doesn't do justice to how one-sided this game has been thus far. The Giants are pretty much moving at will, and the Redskins offense has more yards on penalties than on actual plays.

1:51 Hmmm. I wonder if the Eagles are still paying Jerome McDougle under the table. Nice penalty, jerkoff.

2:49 Redskins false start on the first play of their second drive. FACED on the next play. The 'Skins might be worse than even I thought this year.

2:53 I wonder how much the Giants have to pay for the custom small facebar on John Carney's helmet. I thought sure Morten Andersen was the last guy grandfathered in to use those. Oh yeah--10 to zip Giants. Boo-yah.

4:03 Wow--seven years of Madden and Michaels? Call me old fashioned, but I still miss Pat Summerall.

4:34 Jacobs is a BEAST. That hit he just laid on Laron Landry could make it to "Jacked Up" on Monday.

9:15 First play from scrimmage is a SACK! Justin Tuck isn't going to get through the whole season with that little attention, though.

9:54 TOUCHDOWN G-MEN! Nice drive, but you shudder to see your QB take on a defender and dive for the end zone on first down in the first series of the season. Ask Pennington how bad a shoulder injury can screw your career up.

10:01 And your referee for the evening is Muscles (or is that Mussels) Marinara, aka Ed Hochulie. Nice.

10:43 Heck of a throw and Plaxico is EN FUEGO!!!!~!

10:55 Watch the slapping, Jacobs. We don't need to be knocked out of FG range on a dumbass penalty.

12:20 WOW was the coverage on Burress blown there. The Redskins don't just suck, they su-hu-hu-hu-huck.

1st qtr, 14:00 Nice to see Steve Smith getting looks early. He was an important part of the Super Bowl offense.

Kickoff: Bad blocking by the G-Men on the return. I almost wish they'd kicked off so we could get a good look at the Osi-less D line.

Pregame 3: Strahan calls Giants fans the "greatest fans in sports." Not buying it, at least for the fans at the stadium. In my experience, the fans at the stadium are mostly douchebags who sit on their hands when they should be making noise.

Pregame 2: Also just realized that the game is on NBC, not NFL Network. I'm a mess tonight.

Pregame: When I tuned in NFL Network, I found Usher warbling off-key, so I threw on a Simpsons rerun instead. Would have loved to have caught some pregame but I didn't realize until shortly after 6 PM that the game was at 7:00, not 8:00 due to the Republican convention. Hoping my stromboli gets here before the game starts. Also, really, really hoping for a Giants win. Eli is the QB of all three of my fantasy teams, and I have the Giants picked for a LOT of points in my NFL pick-em pool.