the shrewdness of apes

sometimes, reading the agate type on the sports page leads to a gem like this:

CHICAGO WHITE SOX - named Razor Shines coach of Birmingham (AA) of the Southern League.

this is a step up from the Kannapolis (A) Intimidators for the sharply named Shines. having a great name helped make up for an extremely lackluster career in which he managed only 81 major league ABs over four seasons, without ever hitting a home run. i swear that i remember having one of his baseball cards growing up, but i couldn't find a picture of one online. i did find his Indianapolis Indians bobblehead on sale, however.

i suppose the fact that it's on sale points to the beginning of the end for the bobblehead craze. and none too soon - do we really need more of these pointless souvenirs clogging up our shoeboxes and landfills for years to come until such a point when someone decides that the supply has dwindled enough that they're worth something and Sotheby's starts auctioning them off? is this what we want the anthropologists of the future using to reach conclusions about our society? "hmmm...this appears to be an idol made in tribute to their orb god whom they believed held sway over the economic revitalization of their cities."

and while we're jumping off tangentially here, the razor wars are quickly spiraling out of control. when gillette introduced the Mach III, it was universally hailed as the best razor ever invented. so schick went and dreamed up the Quattro - four blades of cutting power - a razor that engendered a lawsuit and begged the question "where will it end?" while many assumed the jump to five blades was nigh, gillette has countered with the new M3Power which still has only three blades like the Mach III, but now vibrates for some reason. which means, that in addition to buying blades, you'll now have to buy AAA batteries in order for your face (or legs - I've heard many women rave about the Mach III) to achieve strokability.

the t.s.o.a. solution? stop shaving.