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amid the recent tragedies, all the "best of 2004" lists, and the sites stepping over each other to publish their "celebrities who died this year" lists, the ever-eagle-eyed Paul Lukas and Uni Watch give us the rundown on all the major (i.e. horrific) trends and developments among sports uniforms.
could anything possibly be worse than this?
i wanted to touch on an exchange that transpired on Listmaker regarding the assertions by some that Christmas/Christians are under attack by the godless, politically correct liberals and that there is these days less tolerance for their beliefs. setting aside that anyone who claims that Christians in this country are in any way being persecuted on a large scale is lying outright, one of the comments made by an avowed Christian (a non-Republican who nonetheless felt attacked when people objected to getting a copy of the New Testament with their newspaper) got me to thinking:
"I am going to make a point of letting everyone know how proud I am to be a Christian and how happy I am that Jesus was born so that the world could be saved and how much He loves each and everyone one of us."
to me, this is exactly where the impasse in this country comes from. far too many people operate under the impression that Christianity is the national religion of America (or as some like to say, that America is a "Christian Nation"). the fact that the majority of this country is Christian does not mean we are a Christian Nation. just like the fact that the majority of this country is white does not make us an Aryan nation.
while you may be very happy and proud to have accepted Jesus as your savior and that He plays an important role in your everyday existence, if you insist on bellowing that to every passerby, you're going to start getting ignored at best and shouted down at worst. if it's that important to you that you can't spend time with friends or go out in public and not bring it up, then you need to find people with whom you can share that common interest. i'm sorry if you feel like you need to "save" every last person on earth but there are many of us who have had the opportunity to weigh our options and make what we feel is an informed decision to forgo evangelicism and live our lives as best we can in accordance with our own morals which may or may not coincide with yours and we don't need a constant barrage of moral and salvational grandstanding from the true believers. you need to accept that for the U.S.A. to function as a pluralistic society, there have to be certain places (i.e. our government and other public institutions) where no set of beliefs is allowed to run roughshod over others and that the fact that this means that there are times when promoting religious beliefs is inappropriate does not mean that you are being attacked. you're simply being treated like everyone else. and really, the whole proselytizing thing smacks of condescencion considering the history of Christian missions that set out to civilize the "savages" who in many cases had their own historic, well-defined spirituality that was caustically tossed aside.
i have my own spiritual beliefs, but personally put a lot of faith in the logic of mathematics and science and believe that we need to foster a society that is more open, more understanding, more peaceful, more equitable and less selfish. that's my decision based on a lifetime of experiences and i'm quite frankly sick and tired of people who are systematically attacking and persecuting my belief system because it happens to conflict with their assertion that the earth is only 6,000 years old or that bling is king. i will argue and fight for my beliefs but i will not feel persecuted simply because someone disagrees with me. i also know that there are occasions when airing my views is not appropriate and that people don't want to hear me constantly going on about what i believe.
something to think about: this holiday season, people in the U.S. spent about $220 billion dollars which is four times the GDP of Ecuador. if Christmas is under attack from anything, it's from the triumph of commercialism over spirituality something of which even the most pious among us is likely guilty. if the season was truly about Jesus, wouldn't most of that money have gone to help the poor or to the victims of the deadly earthquake/tidal wave? (figures from Gregg Easterbrook's TMQ column which somehow manages to be about football and a million other things all at once).
While cleaning up the comment spam on the site today, I took a couple minutes and went through all the e-mail spam received by my various accounts on Christmas Day. obviously there was no shortage of computers willing to work on a holiday. the breakdown by subject:
Pharmaceuticals - 17
General Merch - 8
Other Medical/Health - 8
Mortgages/Financial - 7
Bored Housewives (Porn) - 6
Software - 6
Free Merch - 5
Dating - 4
Cash Giveaways - 3
Fake Rolex - 3
General Porn - 3
Ink/Toner - 2
Green Cards - 2
Miscellaneous - 2
Viruses - 1
Diplomas - 1
from the "blast from the past" department, what song should come wafting over from the next cubicle today but Dan Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne" - a song i haven't heard in at least 12 years. growing up in a Fogelberg-intensive household left me permanently damaged. i still can't think about Tucson, Arizona without making the association to Dan and his proto-James Taylor balladeering. over the years i must have heard the song in question hundreds of times. but it was only after reading the lyrics today that i realized how insipid they are. it's like the musical equivalent of a third-rate Lifetime movie. or a cross between the Pina Colada Song (can you name the artist?) and Jackson Browne's "The Load Out". and despite the title, it's not really much of a holiday song so i'm not sure why it was being played in between "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and some crap Mariah Carey seasonal schlock.
but perhaps the most horrifying thing about my brief foray back into the realm of Fogelberg was the discovery that this song has produced a work of fanfiction which for some reason is the property of MGM Studios.
marc beat me to the punch on tonight's 1-AA championship contest featuring t.s.o.a. alma mater (can i still call it that even though i remain 4 credits short of graduating?) James Madison University and some college from one of those underpopulated Handsome Western States.
OK, so Montana is pretty fearsome what with their near-annual trips to the finals and a huge throng of supporters who have traveled to Chattanooga to see them. but what's really important here is the wager between me and loyal Griz supporter and native Montanan David L. in the tradition of mayors from opposing World Series cities, we discussed betting products native to the regions of the respective schools. after some debate, i'm prepared to put a bottle of Shenandoah Valley wine on the table, hopefully from Landwirt Vineyards in Harrisonburg (backup is North Mountain Vineyard and Winery). Dave made a preliminary offer of some authentic Montana Elk Jerky and i think putting up 1lb. of that should be sufficient. Let's go Dukes!
a quick follow-up to Wednesday's debate over baseball in DC courtesy of the ever-insightful King Kaufman of Salon.com:
The tide seems to finally be turning against baseball in the "give us a stadium or you won't have a team in your town" scam. Even the Cardinals couldn't get the city that loves them dearly to build them a home outright. But you can't blame rich mendicants for wanting to keep their hands out. When it pays, begging's easy work.
The D.C. Council's private financing requirement only applies to construction of the stadium itself, Cropp says, and that's been estimated at $280 million. Since stadium cost overruns average about 20 percent, you can think of that as $336 million, assuming a project in Washington has a chance to only be average in terms of cost overruns.
But Cropp says $140 million is all that's needed, and expressed confidence Wednesday that that amount can be raised. Even the mayor's office says there's a proposal from a parking company that could bring in $100 million.
Cropp is pretty clearly grandstanding here, suddenly standing up to baseball when the headlines are a lot taller than they would have been before a deal was struck and the happy announcement of a new team for the nation's capital was made.
But politicians grandstand all the time. Just last week Sen. John McCain once again puffed out his chest and threatened to do something about the national security threat of baseball players shooting steroids into their asses, while continuing the long congressional tradition of ignoring baseball's ridiculous antitrust exemption, something that actually calls for legislative remedy.
So why not for a change have such peacock strutting actually benefit the people? Whatever Cropp's motives -- perhaps she has her eye on Williams' gig -- she's doing the right thing.
Last month Washington voters booted out three council members who were in favor of a taxpayer-financed stadium deal and voted in three candidates who opposed it, including former Mayor Marion Barry. As usual the people, who have to actually pay the freight on ballpark boondoggles, were squarely against the deal struck by the politicians, who get credit for securing the sparkling new toys and are long gone by the time the bills come due.
good for the DC City Council. they passed the measure yesterday that would provide the financing for a new baseball stadium for the Nationals (nee Expos). but instead of the publicly financed hijacking that Major League Baseball tried to ram through, they required that at least half of the stadium be privately financed. the corporate welfare that Bud Selig and his cronies receive from virtually every metropolis they do business in is a ridiculous use of taxpayer money for a business whose revenues only continue to grow.
this a great move in my opinion because they have baseball backed into a corner. after a courtship with more twists and turns than an Escher drawing, MLB finally made the smart move and decided to move the Expos to DC. so how will it look now if they decide to rescind that decision after the 2005 season? the outcry will be heard across the country (except for a mute pocket around Baltimore) and Bud et. al. will be pilloried for their capriciousness. they also will be left with no other good options, which is why they chose DC in the first place. Las Vegas? please - they don't have a large enough stadium ready to go for the interim and their metropolitan area population of 1.5 Million pales in comparison to the 4+ Million in the DC area (over 7.5 Million when you include Baltimore too). yes you could say that Vegas gets lot of tourists who could beef up those numbers, but so does DC. DC also has a larger base of big companies and government bigwigs who can buy up luxury suites and pump $$$ into the teams coffers and two of the richest counties in America right outside its borders. and that doesn't even get into the issue of placing a team in a city where sports gambling is legal.
time to suck it up, MLB. you may have just been played.
what does $10 billion dollars a year buy you? well if you're a US taxpayer and you're doing some holiday shopping at the Missile Defense store, there's plenty of failure for sale:
The first test in nearly two years of a multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile shield failed on Wednesday when the interceptor missile shut down as it prepared to launch in the central Pacific, the Pentagon (news - web sites) said.
About 16 minutes earlier, a target missile carrying a mock warhead had been successfully fired from Kodiak Island, Alaska, according to a statement from the Missile Defense Agency.
The aborted $85 million test appeared likely to set back plans for activation of a rudimentary bulwark against long-range ballistic missiles that could be fired by countries like North Korea (news - web sites).
In 2002, President Bush (news - web sites) pledged to have initial elements of the program up and running by the end of this year while testing and development continued.
* giving visa extensions to Romanian strippers who work on your campaign might cause you unwanted scrutiny.
* legislative bodies where there's lots of yelling, booing and pounding of desktops might focus more attention on the debates taking place there, thus keeping the electorate more informed. but even if not, it's pretty damn entertaining.
* joining the US Army to "get an education" can lead to unexpected consequences when we decide to fight protracted, illegal land wars in Asia.
*striking liquor store workers in Quebec are sending people surging over the borders of Ontario and New Brunswick (and, one might imagine, New Hampshire) to procure their holiday intoxicants. wait, even their liquor store employees are unionized?
* i may be developing a crush on Carole MacNeil.
this thing is going to be popping up under far too many trees around New England this Christmas (link courtesy the wife):
coming soon to an awful sports bar near you...
for those so inclined: please check out the new endeavor in which i am involved that aims for a bluer America - though perhaps the term "progressive" is a little more to the point. progressive in this case means creating jobs, insuring the health of all Americans, mitigating poverty, saving social security, cutting the deficit and just generally not acting like despots. should be a piece of cake - if you'd like to contribute, let us know and we'll get you set up. this space will continue to be a repository for the random time-wasting nonsense you've come to depend on.
sitting around with the wife, brother and sister-in-law over thanksgiving we started one of those word games that quickly spirals out of control leaving you unable to think about anything else for hours on end. the end result was a list of rap artists with names changed slightly to make them into animals. the overlords at McSweeney's apparently weren't partial to the genius of our submission, but that doesn't mean we can't still subject the world to it. observe:
The Hip-Hop Zoo
Arrested Develephant
Big Daddy Crane
De La Sole
Eazy-Eel
Emanemone
Ferrett Williams
The Fu-Chickens
Geto Kois
Gorilla Ice
Gnuru
Ice Bee
Jay-Zebra
Kanye West Highland Terrier (rastafied by about 10%)
Kool Mole Dee
Kurtis Blowfish
Ludafish
Luther Camel aka Fluke Skyywalker
Marky Shark and the Monkey Bunch
Moose Def
Mouse of Pain
Mussel Simmons
The Notorious P.I.G.
P. Kitty aka Puff Catty
P.M. Donkey
Prawndre 3000
Queen Lacheetah
Squid ‘N Play
Talib Quaili
Toucan Shakur
Tuna-Lôc
Wildebeestie Boys
Wu-Tang Clam
Young M.Seahorse
Rockies pitcher Denny Neagle gets nabbed soliciting a prostitute and now the team will try to void his contract, or at least buy the contract out for a lesser amount. two things: 1) they have a bit of a case here since there's actual charges involved, whereas the Yankees do not since the evidence against Giambi comes from secret testimony and 2) keep in mind as you read the last sentence that this man has made $20 Million over the past 2 years to basically not pitch.
If talks of a settlement fall apart, the Rockies would release Neagle, then could consider trying to void Neagle's contract on the basis of paragraph 7 (b) (1) of the uniform player's contract. It allows contract termination if a player should "fail, refuse or neglect to conform his personal conduct to the standards of good citizenship and good sportsmanship."
The chances of being able to enforce that clause would be iffy, but it does provide a stimulus to work out a resolution of the contract. That's because an effort to enforce the clause could lead to an investigation into off-field activities that extend beyond the early-Friday episode in which Neagle is accused of paying a prostitute $40 for oral sex.
***UPDATE*** more low-wage shenanigans as Tiger Craig Monroe got arrested yesterday for allegedly stealing a $29.99 belt from a department store. in his defense, he made only $335,000 last year.
Guided By Voices are breaking up and are playing their final New York shows this weekend. i'm extremely upset that i'll be missing the Saturday night show featuring the Chavez reunion, but the wife and i will be there for whoever the special guests are on Sunday night. and according to sources in the know, Sunday has been delcared "Guided by Voices Day" in NYC by Mayor Bloomberg, joining the numerous other cities that have issued GbV Day proclamations. i'll try and get a link to the official document when it becomes available.
December 5th also marks the end of Prohibition (thanks to the GbV 2004 calendar for that tidbit) a fact which i'm sure will not go uncelebrated on Sunday.
it's common knowledge that most fruit candies are not flavored using actual fruit and thus end up with some bastardization of the flavor that can range from that godawful fake chemical banana taste used in Runts to the room-enveloping grape of a piece of Hubba Bubba. so it was with some amazement today that i bit into an apple and realized that it tasted like sour apple candy. in a good way. this wonder of nature is known as the Pink Lady and is available at Rossman Farms (quite possibly the cheapest produce in NYC) and other fine grocers.
steroids - where to start? first of all none of it is surprising. not that they used them, not that Bonds claimed to have done so "unknowingly" (and for a very short period of time), not that the grand jury testimony was leaked, not the outcry from sports radio blatherers and their feckless listeners, not the Yankees attempts to void Giambi's contract (which they almost assuredly can not do), not that everyone has already forgotten about Gary Sheffield and his lack of punishment and not that i've only heard Roger Clemens' name once so far only to have it quickly brushed aside.
so to fan the flames of the indignant, some assertions:
1. steroids don't help you hit. they can help you lift more weight but they don't help you make contact and there's not a clear connection that they help you hit home runs (Steve Finley's odd career stat trajectory aside). if we believe Giambi when he testifies that he started taking steroids in 2001, then look at his career numbers - they actually get worse once he started taking them as his OPS+ has plummeted from 202 to 174 to 151 to 91. certainly some players are going to have better numbers that coincide with their use of steroids and human growth hormone and horse tranquilizers. but almost as certainly there are an equal number of players whose performance declines while they are using.
2. the Players Association has no obligation whatsoever to negotiate a tougher drug testing process than what they and the owners agreed to in 2002. just like an owner is not obligated to renegotiate a contract with a player who is a perennial all-star yet is under contract for only $1.5M.
3. if Barry Bonds only used steroids unknowingly in 2003 (which is what his supposedly truthful testimony asserts - there's no proof of anything else), then i challenge anyone to tell me how that should affect the way we look at his career numbers.
4. it's total hypocrisy for fans to wring their collective hands over this when there has been no outcry for all the amphetamines ("greenies" etc.) that baseball players take on a regular - in some cases everyday - basis. these drugs are most definitely performance enhancers on some level, i.e. curing hangovers and jetlag, boosting energy and confidence etc. this has been common knowledge at least since "Ball Four" came out, yet there's no testing for them and no one is calling talk radio shows to bemoan the games won or records set under their influence and very few consider the vast numbers of players who take them to be cheaters.
here's a very interesting article about the use of supplements (legal and illegal) in baseball, which includes this hilarious quote from Mo Vaughn:
Vaughn and other Major League Baseball players say ephedra and other stimulants -- often referred to as "greenies" -- are essentially a part of baseball tradition, routinely and sometimes blindly consumed to withstand the grind of baseball's marathon season.
Players "use them for energy," Vaughn said this past week in Port St. Lucie, Fla. "We don't think anything about weight loss."
two people - let's say a husband and wife - pull on opposite sides of a wishbone. each comes away with a bone segment but the middle section somehow detaches and drops to the floor, belonging to no one. assuming one party's segment was slightly larger than the other, whose wish gets granted? the longer piece? neither person? both people? the floor?
