Little nephew comes over to spend the night...

We go out to dinner, come back to the condo, play with Legos for a little while, and then kick back to watch some TV show about the ancient Mayans.  Naturally, it's not a compelling topic for a five year old, so he's out like a light.  My brother decides to mess with him and see how he reacts.  Cold can of soda against the belly... kid groans... and then there goes the hand.

I've had some of those dreams, I think.  Can't remember if they go all the way back to when I was five.

I'm sure their mothers are proud.

Obviously I didn't write this, but it bears repeating.

I've taken to avoiding the news for the most part lately.  It's a bunch of people arguing about the best way to lie to you, since as you already know, you're being lied to by lying liars who lie a lot.  Nobody is going to cut a damned thing - ever.  The budget for the United States, in any given year, will never be lower than it was the year before.  It will never happen.  Ever.

So the persistent arguments exist for no reason other than to appease various factions of us, in hopes that we'll keep a given group of liars in power.  Do you really think a tax rate increase on a rich dude will cost you your job?  Then you're dumb.  Do you really think a tax rate increase on a rich dude will improve anything about the budget?  Then you're also dumb.  I prefer one group of liars to the other for the most part, since they at least pretend that the real issues will be addressed, but I simply don't care enough to lose any sleep over it.

Probably more to the point, I don't believe that there's anything like a straight news source in this country anymore.  It's unfortunate, but I have to agree with various right-wing hatemongers who have lamented the fact that journalism died in 2008.  Now all we have are the left-wing bomb throwers and the right-wing bomb throwers, with a few bullshitters making a buck by pretending to straddle the line.  Tapper does a pretty fair job for the most part, even though I'm pretty sure he's a liberal at heart.  I think guys like Will and Krauthammer do a fair job, even though they're more of the opportunistic establishment sorts than I would prefer.  Hearing liberals decry their rampant conservatism is amusing to me, to say the least.  Those guys are more conservative than not, but they're hardly fans of Rand Paul and his ilk.

But anyhow, yeah, straight news.  Reuters is good for a chuckle every time bad news comes out, since all bad news under Obama happens "unexpectedly."  (For realsies, you can Google it.)  But the AP is supposed to be the gold standard, right?  And this is what our piss-poor gold standard looks like. 
[Reiterating what I said in the title of this post - nothing in the following blockquote was written, thought, or known by me.  I merely saw this tonight and laughed a rueful laugh.]

Two Wire Services in One!

"WASHINGTON--A transformative health care bill is headed to President Barack Obama for his signature as Congress takes the final steps in Democrats' improbable and history-making push for near-universal medical coverage. On the cusp of succeeding where numerous past congresses and administrations have failed, jubilant House Democrats voted 219-212 late Sunday to send legislation to Obama that would extend coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, reduce deficits and ban insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions."--Associated Press, March 22, 2010

"LANSING, Mich.--In an audacious flex of political muscle, Republicans in a single day reached the brink of a goal that for years has seemed an all-but-impossible dream: making the labor bastion of Michigan a right-to-work state. The GOP majority used its superior numbers and backing from Gov. Rick Snyder to ramrod legislation through the House and Senate on Thursday, brushing aside denunciations and walkouts by helpless Democrats and cries of outrage from union activists who swarmed the state Capitol hallways and grounds. At one point, police used pepper spray to subdue demonstrators who tried to rush the Senate chamber."--Associated Press, Dec. 7, 2012

That one comes from James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal.  I don't catch it regularly, but his 'Best of the Web Today' column has always been interesting whenever I've read it.  This one was no exception.

My brother asked me today why my cousin was talking about going to Lansing tomorrow.  I had no idea.  Then I got a call on my Comcast phone number from James Hoffa.  I don't have a home phone, but I have a home phone number.  The cable package came with TV and internet and... you probably know how that goes.  So anyway, I don't have a home phone.  The only people who call my inactive number are telemarketers.  The voicemail greeting is set up in Spanish, just for shits and giggles, so most of them hang up.  The robocalls go ahead and leave a message though.  Tonight's robot Hoffa was going on about protecting workers' rights in Michigan.

"Workers' rights" is code language, as you surely know.  Apparently there's some kind of anti-union deal going on in my home state.  I don't know the details of it, since I really couldn't care less.

People are pretty fired up about it though.  So they're going to protest in Lansing or whatever.  Mr. Hoffa wants me to join forces with the working men and women of Michigan.  I'm probably just going to sleep in though.  I have quite a bit of work to do tomorrow, and none of it will involve union busting or union supporting.  As per usual, I simply don't care.

That article was pretty hilarious though.  Those of us who fall on the 'freedom' side of the neverending freedom-equality tug of war would do well to remember that there are no objective sources on our side either, but the majority of "straight" news in this country comes from folks like those at the AP.  The gold standard.

Had dinner at the Tilted Kilt tonight

Didn't hate it.

Apparently there are more locations coming to Michigan, but the Novi one is A-OK by me.

An outlier has been identified.

As the past week has transpired, I've noticed that the loyalty of SEC fans to their conference is nothing short of creepy.  It's almost like they're still pissed about that 'War of Northern Aggression' or something.  (Hint: They are.)  I suppose there's something to be said for the idea that a losing team might feel better if the team that beat them were to go on and win it all.  Then the losing team can make some sort of perpetual claim to #2 status, or whatever.  But the SEC takes it to a whole new level.

I used to live in Georgia.  I still have relatives down there and, through the wonders of having been a truck driver, I came to know a few other people down there.  So I know that several of them were pretty damned fired up about that game against Alabama yesterday.  They hate Nick Saban.  They hate Alabama.  They hate Bear Bryant's ghost and all the rest of it.  They really wanted to win that game.  But they lost.

Now... they're rooting for Alabama to beat Notre Dame so that the national title will stay in the SEC?  What the fuck kind of hillbilly logic is that?  It's not just Georgia either.  The LSU and Florida degenerates are the same way.

Obviously Notre Dame is an independent in football, so I don't have a direct connection to the conference mindset, but I can't think of a time when I've ever rooted for USC to win a game.  I don't necessarily root against them either (I really don't care if they win or not), but I sure as shit don't have some blind loyalty to a rival program.  I don't root for the Cowboys when the Redskins miss the playoffs.  I don't like the Cowboys - full stop.  Why in the hell would I want them to win a Super Bowl?  I don't root for the Blackhawks after the Wings are out.  I don't like the Blackhawks.  I don't root for the White Sox when the Tigers are out.  I don't like the White Sox.  I can't imagine what kind of loser's satisfaction I would get from being able to say, "Well yeah, we ain't that good, but at least the AL Central won the Series."  That mindset is just stupid, man.  Stupid and creepy.

But at least there's one spot in the SEC where pure unadulterated hatred isn't going to be compromised by weird cult sensibilities.

Sure, they just whacked their coach and there are probably going to be some NCAA issues to deal with in the near future, but at least the Auburn fans still hate Alabama more than they hate everybody outside the SEC.  I was in Auburn once.  Aside from the fact that it seemed like a really remote place, compared with some of the other college towns that I had visited, nothing really stuck out about it.  Just another place along the highway.  But now, thanks to a fairly clever bit of graphic design work that appears to be supporting my Irish, I think I'll like Auburn for the next month or two.

There's certainly this to consider.

Next stop - Championship Game

Let's do this.

Let me get this straight...

Your old coach gets caught cheating, then lying to investigators in order to cover up the cheating.  As a result, your team is on probation.  Therefore you're going to be sitting on your asses for the rest of the season instead of competing for the national championship.

Then, today, the cheating coach gets carried into the stadium like a hero and receives a standing ovation?  The guy who has rendered this undefeated season of yours meaningless?

Heh.  Ohio...  you people are special.  And I don't mean the good kind of special.  I mean the kind like that kid who sits at the back of the class eating boogers all day.

It's Lit

Photo from an article at wndu.com.  Maybe it will shine for more than five days this time.

I had my first professional fight.

Still working on my moves.

(Hint: That's not really I.  I just thought it was funny.)

Also, you political people are funny.  I caught a few minutes of television tonight.  Heh.

Eat a dick.

I won't defend that performance.  It was ugly.  It was uninspiring.  It was sloppy.  But you know what?  A major college football team had a chance to make a field goal, and it missed.  Then the same team got another crack at the ball, and it settled for a field goal.  Its opponent marched down the field and scored a touchdown, so eat a dick.

If there are three or more (excluding Louisville, as if anyone cares) undefeated teams, I'll understand if Notre Dame gets left out of the championship game.  You know what though?  There probably won't be three or more undefeated teams.  And the ones who didn't find a way to win, kinda like the way Notre Dame did find a way to win, well... they can eat a dick.

And so can ESPN.

I was 17 years old once.

The night that I watched Notre Dame beat Florida State in '93 was pretty incredible.  My girl that night wasn't quite up to speed, but I got a pretty decent tug out of her.  More importantly, the Irish were the frontrunners for the national title.  Those Jesuits from Chestnut Hill went and screwed it all up a week later, but at least we had our night.

It's been a long time since then. (19 years? Fuck.)

It feels good to be one of the big dogs again though.  It really does. 

Even though the Tigers are about to get swept out of the World Series, at least I have my Irish.  I'll take the wins where I can get them.  The people around here hate Notre Dame and love the Tigers.  I love Notre Dame and love the Tigers.  What can I say?  I'm a lover, not a fighter.

So obviously I can't write the script, but  you can bet your ass that I'm enjoying the ride.  This football season has been fun.  It's going to be more fun, and then it's going to be more stressful.  Just keep winning, guys.  For fuck's sake, please just keep winning.

We'll deal with the Tigers next year.

One More Crack At It

Addendum to my previous post:

Joe Girardi might as well shut the hell up as well.

Has he forgotten that there's a digital trail of all of this stuff?  I agreed with him at the time, for what it's worth.  Baseball is not football.  Perhaps it's logical to replay the missed homerun calls and whatnot, but the umpires have always been a part of the game.  Unless you want to do away with them entirely, you're just going to have to deal with a bad call from time to time.  (We know a thing or two about blown calls here in Detroit, of course.)

So a play that was obviously a double by Joe Mauer, in the 11th inning, of a tie game, wasn't cause to call for replay.  Got it?  But a flukey play where Omar Infante overran second base and then slipped on his way back, during regulation, in a game that the Tigers were already winning, a game in which the Yankees scored a grand total of zero runs, is cause to call for replay.  Got it?

So here's the deal - just shut up.

If you manage to dig your way out of this hole - down 0-2 and sending Phil Hughes out to face Justin Verlander tomorrow - people will be singing your praises for years to come.  If you don't, then you'll be on the hot seat just like every other New York coach who fails to finish the job.  In neither case will that play at second base have made the difference.  Robinson Cano and Alex Rodriguez combining to bat .100 (or whatever it is) will have been the reason you lost.  Or [insert hero here] going on a hot streak and beating up Tigers pitching will have been the reason you won.

You know what I've learned in recent years?

Just shut up.  When you lose, be pissed about it.  Make a few comments about what you should have done better.  Then shut the fuck up.  I've learned this because my teams have lost a lot.  At times, they've been screwed by the officials.  But whining about officials is still the act of a loser.

So, with a hat tip to whatever sbnation is, let's just put this to bed and stop the whining.

1. Elbow down
2. Players running off the field, since the whistle had been blown
3. Running back reaches the ball across the line

So shut up, seriously.  If you want to pretend that you can see everything that happens during every play, then acknowledge that you gained most of your yards on plays during which your right tackle was holding.  Then... shut up.

Should Valverde still be the closer?

The answer is no. Valverde should not be the closer.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, then just enjoy a chuckle at my expense and don't worry about it.  I'm angry and bitter for a change.  Normally Notre Dame leaves me in this state, but they just seem to keep winning this year.  So my Tigers have had to pick up the slack.

If you know what I'm talking about and you disagree with me, then I have some bad news for you.  You're an idiot.  I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you.  (And it saddens me to know that Jim Leyland is probably one of you, for whatever that's worth.)  Valverde has been a damned disgrace all year.  Even when he somehow finishes a game without blowing it, he gives up a few baserunners and gives us all heartburn.  Enough is enough.

So now Verlander has to go out and finish these rednecks tomorrow.  That will give me an excuse to have a few beers and watch an extra ballgame and whatnot, but it never should have gotten to this point.  Assuming that he does his job and we move on to the next round, the rotation will have to be anchored by Fister and Sanchez.  Not a bad pair of pitchers, incidentally, but we'll probably only get one start out of our ace.  That's a tough deal when every game matters this much.

Fucking Valverde.  Ruined my fucking night.

Holy Smokes

When I saw the video clip where Piers Morgan speaks with Stacey Dash about the reaction to her support for Mitt Romney, I probably should have been impressed by her dignity and class in the face of the typical liberal response.  If a black person steps out of line, then by golly that black person is a race traitor... and so on.  Then you add in the fact that she's a woman, and we know that all women are inherently liberal, even if they have the audacity to think otherwise.  So the response was predictable, and her response to the response was far more dignified.

None of that really stood out to me though.  As I watched the interview, I couldn't believe how absolutely gorgeous she is.  She was kinda cute when that movie Clueless came out, but that was like a hundred years ago.  This chick has to be at least 40 years old by now, right?  And yet she looks way better.

Then I read the brief article that accompanied the video clip.  She's 46 years old?  Holy smokes.

Discoveries

I won't get into too much detail about how I stumbled across this one.  We'll just say that there are parts of the internet where no decent person would ever tread.  I stop by to say 'Hi' to old friends there every now and then.

Tonight someone submitted a link to a questionable video.  That questionable video begat other questionable videos.  And so on and so forth, until a reasonable person could only conclude that the internet was a worthless cesspool.

I had a leg up on the world though, because I knew that the internet was a worthless cesspool long before most people logged on to their first AOL accounts.  The trick is to filter out the noise.  One video, another, another... horrible, horrible, horrible...

Then came something different.  If I didn't know any better, I might think I was in love.  I do know better, so no worries there.  On second thought though, I don't know man...

(UPDATE: 10/11/12 4:08am)

It's possible that you might view cover songs as somehow inferior to the originals.  Given the varied experience that we have, I don't blame you.  Remember Madonna singing American Pie?  What a fucking debacle.  So, in the interest of accuracy, I'm going to include Mr. Browne's version of his lovely song.

I think that the most recent object of my affection sang it better, but who the hell am I?  Judge for yourselves.

Braves "fans"

I'm sure there are people who really are fans of the Atlanta Braves.  I've never met one though.  I've loved baseball longer than I've ever loved anything else in my life.  I guess there's supposed to be a caveat for my family and whatnot, but there are times that I could do without them.  Baseball has been the one constant.  I've always loved baseball.  And I've never met an actual Atlanta Braves fan.  I even used to live in Georgia, but I've still never met and actual Braves fan.  I've met people who called themselves Braves fans, naturally, but you know...

I was watching the game tonight when the left field umpire made the (absolutely correct) infield fly rule call in the 8th inning.  Before you start imitating those degenerate hillbillies and start throwing virtual beer cans at me, let's take a look at the rule (emphasis mine).

"On the infield fly rule the umpire is to rule whether the ball could ordinarily have been handled by an infielder, not by some arbitrary limitation such as the grass, or the base lines. The umpire must rule also that a ball is an infield fly, even if handled by an outfielder, if, in the umpire's judgment, the ball could have been as easily handled by an infielder."

Simply take the rule for what it says.  Could the ball have been handled by the shortstop, as easily as it could have been handled by the left fielder?  Yep, and you're lying to yourself if you say otherwise.  The word is "could," not "was."  He was camped under the ball, not backpedaling, with his hand raised to signal that he was calling off the outfielder.  If you're an umpire observing this situation, the only logical conclusion to draw is that the ball could "ordinarily" be handled by the infielder.  So you must make the call.  It's right there in the rule.  The umpire doesn't have a crystal ball telling him that the shortstop will misjudge the ball by about ten feet and then bail out at the last second.  For the bulk of that baseball's flight, everybody watching that game would have agreed that the ball could be handled by the shortstop - "ordinarily."

Where the umpire erred was in his delayed signal.  I have no idea when he yelled, as they always do, "Infield fly, batter's out!"  The call is usually a boring formality, handled in such a way that the verbal call goes out and then the hand is raised.  All we can see on the video is the hand being raised, but logic would dictate that there was some sort of call made at least a second or so before the hand went up.

That being said, the call and the signal should have been given sooner.  The point of the rule is to protect the runners from getting erased by shady double plays.  As soon as the rule is invoked and the batter is called out, the runners no longer have to decide what to do on the bases.  They can simply stay put, without any risk of being forced at the next base.  Or they can run, at their own risk, and let the chips fall where they may.  The umpire was clearly trying to make sure that the shortstop was under the ball before he gave the signal, but there would have been no controversy at all if he had made the call sooner.  Drunken rednecks in Atlanta still would have bitched about the call, but there would have been no legitimate controversy.

None of this excuses what happened at Turner Field tonight.  The correct call was made, less quickly than it should have been made, but it was correct in any event.  Then those losers at the stadium delayed the game by fifteen minutes while they threw their assorted garbage on the field.

As tends to happen on this blog, we're now going to get to the point of this post, several hundred words after I began typing it.  Judging from the reaction that you saw on television tonight, you might be tempted to think that these people in Atlanta are die-hard baseball fans.  They're not.  That's what I'm here to tell you.  Your first clue should have been that they don't understand the infield fly rule.  From what I've seen tonight though, most people don't understand the infield fly rule.  So I guess I don't get to use that on my 'baseball fan' qualifying exam.

I'll instead do what I like to do on this blog, when I'm not making smartassed remarks about the president or engaging in wishful thinking about Notre Dame.  I'm going to tell you a story.

(I'm presently enrolled in an online composition course at Arizona State.  The teachers don't ever let me wander around and explore the shit that pops into my head before I say what needs to be said.  They want every part of a given paper to relate to the assignment.  Unfortunately for you, this blog is not graded for credit.  So you'll just have to wait until I'm good and ready to get to the point.  I think I'm ready now.)

I was wrapping up a hell of a bender in Detroit with a buddy one night when we heard that Pete Rose was going to be allowed to be honored in Atlanta before a World Series game.  There was one of those 'greatest of all time' teams being unveiled, or something like that.  It was the first time that Pete Rose was allowed to be associated with Major League Baseball, following his lifetime ban.  My drinking buddy at the time was a huge Pete Rose fan, so we decided that we would get tickets and fly to Atlanta for the game.  World Series tickets would be tough to get though, so we were prepared to pay a heavy price.

There was one thing to try before we resorted to using a scalper though.  When I shook off my hangover the next morning, I logged on to ticketmaster.com.  This was quite a few years ago, mind you, so things on the internet weren't entirely the same as they are now.  (It was '99, I think.  I might be off by a year or two.)  Anyhow, there had been an announcement that something like 3,000 seats would be released on Ticketmaster that day, so I expected the servers to be tied up.  The present system puts you into a virtual waiting room until your spot in line comes up, then you tie into the server and see what's available.  Back then it was the Wild West.  If you got in before the whole thing crashed, good for you.  Otherwise, sorry about your luck.

For a busy event, the Ticketmaster system usually crashed within five or ten minutes of tickets going on sale.  The tickets had been on sale for an hour or so by the time I got up, so I expected to find that the system was down or that the tickets were all gone. Nope.  There were no delays as I logged in to the site.  I requested four tickets.  I got four tickets.  Beauty.

The drinking buddy from the night before was going with me, obviously.  Another guy that we knew decided that he would buy a plane ticket and join us as well.  (I flew for free back then, since my kind and loving wife was a flight attendant.  The other two fellas had to buy plane tickets.)  Anyhow, the three of us went to Atlanta and we had one extra seat to spare.

We went to a bar near the stadium for some pre-game festivities.  The bar was pretty crowded, but we got a table.  We sat and talked with Braves "fans" and Yankees fans for quite a while.  Nobody wanted our extra ticket, even though we were offering it for free.  We wound up leaving it at the bar for anyone who cared to take it.  I assume that someone eventually grabbed it.  I don't know.  We never sat in our seats at the game, since we were perfectly content to wander around the stadium and make frequent stops at the beer concessions.

The Braves were pretty good back then, as you probably gathered from the fact that they were in the World Series.  I used to see their playoff games on television.  Thousands of fans doing their little war chant and tomahawk chop - the atmosphere seemed electric.  It wasn't.  The whole thing was fake.  When the PA system played the war chant, the fans would do their little chopping motion.  When the music stopped, the fans stopped.  It was cheesy, uninspiring, and lame.  And there were a lot of empty seats.  At key points in the game, when the fans should have been going apeshit, the place was dead.

This whole experience threw my buddies and me for quite a loop.  As you may or may not recall, the Tigers were awful at the time.  The crowds at Tiger Stadium weren't very large, to say the least, but at least the fans at the games gave a shit about baseball.  When a mediocre hitter managed to slap one through the right side with a runner in motion, putting men at first and third with one out, the place went nuts.  In Atlanta - during a World Series game - there was no such dynamic.  The baseball fans there really sucked - seriously.

One of my friends was pretty drunk by the time the game really got going.  He and I had purchased a pair of caps with that little sissy 'A' logo on them and started rooting for the Braves right at the start of the game.  Why?  'Cause screw the Yankees.  That's why.  We were Braves fans that night, so we wanted the Braves to win.  Whenever he would start shouting loudly and trying to get the crowd fired up, other people would start yelling... at him... telling him to sit down and shut up.  I'm not kidding.

As the years have gone by since that time, we've all seen reports about the fact that the Braves have won all kinds of division titles and such, but they still don't sell out their stadium for playoff games.  (Tonight's game was not a sellout, incidentally.)  And then, when one controversial (but correct) call is made, that bunch of bums is going to spend fifteen minutes throwing shit on the field? 

Give me a break.  Where was the outrage when the Braves made 3 errors tonight?  How about the 12 men that they left on base? Going 1-for-8 with men in scoring position?  How about the swing and miss that didn't count before Ross hit that homerun?  No, no, no.  Those things don't explain why the Braves are done for the season.  It was an umpire making a judgment call on a play that the Cardinals shortstop wound up botching.  That's why the Braves lost.  These people are pathetic.

Cliff's Notes version of this post - Braves fans, to the extent that there actually are Braves fans, are a bunch of losers.

I suppose this one will follow a predictable path.

Sununu being Sununu, Sununu calls it like he sees it.


Oh my... did he really?  Setting aside how refreshing it was to see a guy who knew exactly what he was trying to say, and didn't flinch when the hacktastic hack known as Andrea Mitchell gave her predictably hacktastic response, we all know what comes next...

I've always been amused by this line of thought.  Newt Gingrich refers to record numbers of people on food stamps, so obviously Newt Gingrich is a racist.  It never occurs to the people making the accusation that they're the ones who equated food stamps with a given race, not Gingrich.  Now, just wait and see.  Sununu called the president lazy, so now Sununu will be a racist.  It might take a day or two, but you'll hear it.  The people hurling the charge will be blissfully unaware that they are the ones who connected laziness with race, but they'll "lean forward" anyway.

Quick sidebar time, in case you wonder where I stand.  Who has two thumbs and is lazy?  This guy. (This is where you have to picture me pointing at myself with both thumbs.  You knew that, right?)

http://vitocorleone99.blogspot.com/2009/10/101809.html
http://vitocorleone99.blogspot.com/2009/02/21009.html
http://vitocorleone99.blogspot.com/2009/09/91709.html
http://vitocorleone99.blogspot.com/2007/11/111007.html
http://vitocorleone99.blogspot.com/2008/02/21308.html
http://vitocorleone99.blogspot.com/2008/02/21008.html
http://vitocorleone99.blogspot.com/2008/03/3408.html
http://vitocorleone99.blogspot.com/2008/08/81208.html
http://vitocorleone99.blogspot.com/2010/10/101710.html

That's a sampling of posts where I informed you internet people that I'm lazy.  And I'm pretty damned white, so I guess I don't equate laziness with dark skin.

I don't know how quick the Republicans are when it comes to battling smears these days.  Historically speaking, the answer is that they seem to be caught off guard more often than not.  This one should be easy to handle though.  First because it's so predictable.

Second, well.  Click the image to hear it from the man himself.

If there's anybody calling Sununu a racist in the near future, and you know there will be, just pass along this link and watch the equivocation begin.

I don't watch debates.

In point of fact, I don't follow politics much at all.  I scan the headlines once or twice a day, to see what's going on in the world, but that's about it.  My viewpoints are pretty well established, so it's not like I'm in need of much persuasion.  And I don't really talk with people about politics anymore, so it's not like I'm going to do much persuading.  Therefore, I just ignore it whenever possible.

Last night, it was impossible to ignore the fact that there was a presidential debate.  It was easy enough to ignore the debate, mind you.  I just watched the Tigers wrap up their season and then read some of the news articles reacting to Cabrera's Triple Crown.  The inevitable MVP debate began almost immediately as well, so I was interested to hear some of the perspectives on that.

So ignoring the debate was no problem at all.  Ignoring the fact that there was a debate - different story entirely.  I have an e-mail address that is probably on every spam mailing list known to mankind.  I've been using it since the very early days of free e-mail and I've registered for hundreds of websites with it.  So it comes as no surprise that I was bombarded last night with pre-debate and post-debate spam.  Basically there were Republican and/or conservative groups claiming that Romney whipped the shit out of Obama, then there were Democrat and/or liberal groups claiming that Obama would do better next time.

Nobody thinks Obama won, apparently.  That's quite unusual, according to my experience with these things.  There's always a parade of Baghdad Bobs out there saying that their guy was awesome, even when wasn't.  If there are people praising Obama's performance from last night, I haven't seen them.  Based on an unscientific poll of last night's and this morning's spam e-mail, I'd say it looks like Obama must have been pretty damned bad.

There were three different spammers who hit me with the following video this morning.


It's only something like 30 seconds long, so I watched it.  As it played the first time, I wasn't sure whom the ad was supporting.  It looked like it was probably a Romney ad about taking charge or whatever, but it didn't seem to have a coherent point.  Then, at the end, it had the bit about being paid for by the Democrats.  So I guess "Romney is a bully" is about the best they can do at this point.  Like I said earlier, apparently Obama didn't have a good debate.  But the link from my e-mail had taken me to breitbart.tv or something like that.  Democrats wouldn't have sent me there.

I went back to my e-mail inbox and found that the spam message was from one of those "grassroots" conservative groups.  You know the ones - raising money through donations and then paying salaries to a few dozen people who just spam the shit out of anybody who may have ever held a conservative point of view about anything.  Yeah, it was one of those.

There was another spam message from some sort of Catholic pro-life outfit, talking about other parts of the debate.  I assume that they are still pissed about that Sebelius/Obamacare debacle.  I didn't read the whole e-mail.  I did notice that they also linked to the Breitbart story about this ad though.  Sort of a non sequitur with respect to their mission, it seemed, but I guess everybody likes to make fun of clueless political operatives.  Whoever produced this ad was pretty damned clueless.

Which brings us to the third spam message.  The third group to send me a link to this video was some sort of union activism outfit.  Since I signed up with the Teamsters, I get all kinds of that stuff.  They started with the standard bit about how Romney will kill every job in America by the end of February.  Then they included a link to this same DNC video.  This link was to a YouTube version hosted by DemRapidResponse.  The thing only had something like 300 views when I clicked on it.

In browsing around under that DemRapidResponse account on YouTube and then the main democrats.org stuff, I can't find any mention of this ad.  If I'm being told by conservative groups that I should watch a DNC ad, and I'm being told by at least one liberal group that I should watch a DNC ad, then why doesn't the DNC seem to want to acknowledge that the ad exists?  It's all just really weird.

And so is the ad.  Really weird.  The president has to deal with the reputation that he's an effete pansy every time Putin spits in his face or the ChiComs tell him where to stick it, so I don't understand why his supporters would produce an ad that reinforces this reputation.  You lost a debate.  BFD.  Live to fight another day.  Don't rush out there and produce an ad that makes the other guy look like a more assertive leader.

This is Hogan Stand!!!

I suspect that 99% of you have no idea what the title of this post means.  Our Irish friend probably knows, but I certainly had never heard the phrase before my trip to the island.


As you probably know, my brother Jake and I spent a week in Ireland recently.  Our intention was to see as much of the country (and Northern Ireland) as possible, in addition to seeing the Notre Dame game against Navy in Dublin.  We arrived on a Wednesday afternoon, had a bit of a hassle with the arrangements for our rental car, and then made the half-hour drive from Dublin to Enfield.

After dropping off our luggage at our hotel, we immediately hit the road.  We spent Wednesday evening on the west coast.  We had some seafood in Galway, drove along the coast for a while, and grabbed a pint in Doolin before heading back to the hotel. 

On Thursday, we decided to head out early to visit Belfast and the north coast.  After spending a couple of hours in Belfast and then doing the rope bridge thing along the coast, we stopped at a pub for some lunch.  Our cheeseburgers tasted a little weird, but I guess that comes as no surprise.  Aside from fish and chips, I have absolutely no use for Irish food.

As we sat in our car and got ready to head for the Giant's Causeway, an old man came out of the pub.  He walked over toward the side of our car and gestured toward me.  I rolled down the window and greeted him.  (Those Irish people really are a pretty friendly bunch.  It's not just a stereotype.)  He mentioned that he had overheard us talking about the Notre Dame game in Dublin, then showed us an article that he was reading in the newspaper - The Irish News, I think.  I can't recall exactly which paper it was, but that's not the point.  There was an article in his newspaper about the game and he was pretty excited to talk about it.

After we talked for a few minutes, the old guy mentioned that there was a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Mayo on Sunday.  If we were sports fans, he suggested, we may want to check it out.  Then he showed me another article in the same paper - this one about the Dublin-Mayo match.  As I thanked him for the information, he offered to give me his newspaper.  "Are you finished with it?" I asked.

"No, not yet, but there'll be another one tomorrow," he replied.

I thanked him for the offer, but told him that I'd just grab a copy in the next town.  Now that I recall this part of the conversation, I'm pretty sure that it was The Irish News.  He told me that it would be for sale in any town along the way.  I never bought myself a paper.  I forgot.

Anyhow, as my brother and I rolled on toward our next stop, we decided that we should make sure we stopped at a pub somewhere to watch the Gaelic football match on Sunday.  We had absolutely no idea what Gaelic football was, but our new friend had made it sound like a pretty big deal.  We didn't really have a detailed schedule in mind for our trip anyway.  We knew that we wanted to see a handful of specific places.  Outside of that, we were just taking each day as it came to us.  Obviously we would be in Dublin for the Notre Dame game on Saturday, but we had no idea where we would be on Sunday.

After driving back down to Enfield on Thursday night, we logged some serious miles on Friday.  We headed down to the Rock of Cashel first.  Any place that has been significant for 800 years or so seemed like it might be worth checking out.  The next guided tour was about 45 minutes away, so we just wandered around for a little while and checked out the scenery.

From Cashel, we headed to Blarney.  You've heard of the Blarney Stone, right?  Well, if they say you receive the gift of eloquence by kissing the stone, then who am I to pass up the opportunity?  The only issue was the fact that there were a shit-ton of Notre Dame fans in Cork and Blarney on Friday.  It took us right around two hours to get through the line and plant our lips on that sucker.  For what it's worth, most people were leaning back and kissing the wall wherever their heads happened to land.  I got all the way down to the bottom.  That's how it's supposed to be done, I think.  No news on that eloquence bit yet, but I'll let you know how it turns out.

The lengthy wait in Blarney, combined with a little time enjoying a leisurely pint at the local pub afterward, forced us to decide where to prioritize the rest of our day.  We had entertained the thought of taking a tour of Muckross House, but that wasn't a huge concern.  There was a steakhouse in Killarney that the bartender in Blarney had recommended, but we took a pass on that as well.  We decided to haul ass up to Ennis and get some dinner, then catch the sunset at the Cliffs of Moher.  It was an ambitious plan, to be sure, but one that we thought would work pretty well.

As we dined at the pub in Ennis, we saw numerous flyers hanging on the walls.  Most of them were advertising the upcoming match between Dublin and Mayo.  If it had been a big deal all the way up in Ballintoy (where the old man offered me his newspaper) and it was a big deal all the way over in Ennis, then we certainly needed to make sure we found a place to watch the match on Sunday.

We got out to the cliffs just before sunset.  The brother who was with me on this trip was not the brother who is a photographer, so I don't know if his shots of the scenery were the best we could do.  (The panorama on the left came from my cell phone, for whatever it's worth.)  What I do know is that it was absolutely beautiful to see the sunset in person.  It's an experience I'll never forget.  Unfortunately, I hit a stone on the side of the road and broke the car on the way back that night (another topic for another post), so we spent some time sitting on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck to arrive.

By the time we made it back to Enfield, it was 4am and there was a Notre Dame tailgate scheduled for the following morning.  Power nap time.

After we rode the shuttle bus to Dublin and checked in at the tailgate party on Saturday morning, we decided to step out and have a little more fun.  They were charging €5 for a pint of Guinness at the party and the atmosphere was pretty fake.  We hadn't paid more than €5 anywhere in Ireland on our trip up to that point, so we saw no need to stick around.  We came across a pub, not too far down the road, that was just opening for the day.  That bartender had no idea what was about to hit him.

Within five minutes of the guy opening the door, the place was overrun by people in Notre Dame gear.  Nobody else was around to help.  This poor fella looked like a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest.  We bought and consumed our fill of pints and shots, then moved on down the road.

The next place was pretty nice, as far as I recall. The menu for the day, up to this point, had consisted of Jameson and Guinness.  My brother had seen a bottle of Scotch the day before though, and it had piqued his interest.  One of his dogs is a little Scottish terrier.  There's a brand of Scotch called Black & White, with a couple of little scotties on the label.  He asked the bartender if he had any Black & White.  Yep.  Two of those and two beers, then, please.  Thank you.  That stuff was pretty tasty.  I'm under the impression that it's not a very highly regarded whisky, and I tend to prefer Irish whiskey to Scotch, but it was good stuff.  Seriously.

After another round or two at that place, we hit another place.  And then... well, you can see where this story is headed.  We were feeling no pain by the time we settled into our awesome endzone seats and watched Notre Dame kick some serious ass.  They were selling mass quantities of Guinness at Aviva Stadium, incidentally, and the ushers were helping people carry the beer back to their seats.  I'm not kidding.

I took a picture just before kickoff and then my phone died.  The game was awesome, I was fired up, and the atmosphere was perfect.  Even the people surrounding us, mostly parents of Navy players, were enjoying the experience for the most part.

As the game wore on, my brother started to struggle a little bit.  We had consumed a lot - and I do mean a lot - of alcohol before the game.  Eventually the drinks, combined with the previous night's lack of sleep, forced his eyes closed.  I was struggling right there with him, to tell the truth, but I was riding on adrenaline so I was able to hold my own.  After he started to sway toward the dude on his left a couple of times, I started keeping an eye on my brother.  Whenever he started to lean to the side, I would elbow him in the ribs and bring him back to reality.

After four or five jabs to the ribs, my brother got mad at me and left our section.  I had no idea where he was going and I really didn't care.  All I knew was that the guy on his left would stop glaring at me and I could enjoy the rest of the game.

Just before the game was over, my brother came back and sat in his seat.  He brought food with him, so that was pretty awesome.  I don't know if you folks have ever gotten drunk in the morning, but if you have, then I assume you were starving by 5pm.  I certainly was.

As he had wandered around the stadium, my brother had encountered some people who were talking about the upcoming Gaelic football game.  According to them, he told me, there would be 20-30,000 seats available at Croke Park if we wanted to check out the action.  This provided some food for thought concerning how we might spend our Sunday.  Should we go and see some Gaelic football?  It was certainly worth considering.

Between the time that the game ended and the time that our shuttle bus took us back to Enfield, we were able to visit a few pubs and have a few pints.  During our conversations with various local residents (have I mentioned that those Irish people are pretty friendly?), we heard that the Dublin-Mayo match was a really big deal and that there sure as hell wouldn't be 20,000 empty seats.  We could probably score a pair outside a Dublin pub though, if we were willing to bargain.

What to do?  What to do?  We rode the shuttle back to our hotel and promptly fell asleep.  I woke at 3am and watched the end of Michigan's debacle against Alabama.  That was nice to see.  Then I went back to bed.  When we both got up on Sunday morning, we had to decide how we were going to spend our day.  Head southward and see some scenic towns along the coast?  Head up to Brú na Bóinne and see some shit that is older than the Egyptian pyramids?  Or go to Dublin and try to get tickets to a match that we really don't understand?

I suppose you probably already know how that discussion turned out, right?  We went to Dublin.  After sitting in traffic for a half hour, we found a parking space behind a pub/restaurant.  The parking lot had a 'pay and display' setup, so we had to buy a ticket for a given amount of time and leave it on our dashboard.  We had enough coins to buy an hour and a half.  If we were going to watch the game, we would need five or six hours.  We weren't sure if we would get tickets to the game though, so we just dumped all of our coins into the machine and went for a walk.

We got all the way down to the stadium, with a stop at a pub or two along the way, then started looking for tickets.  Outside the pubs on the way to the stadium, we had seen tickets for sale in the range of €55-100.  As we approached the official ticket office, a fella walked up and asked if we were looking for seats.  I looked at my brother.  He looked at me.  We took a moment... sure, why not?

The guy told us to follow him across the street to a quiet spot, away from the prying eyes of the garda.  The following conversation is damned near word-for-word.  I wasn't drinking on Sunday, so there is no intoxication for which to account.  The only variable is the dialect.  I'm not entirely convinced that those people speak English.

"Lookin' for seats, lads?"

"Ehh, maybe a pair."

"Here you go, boys.  Two of 'em right there.  Hogan Stand.  Eighty quid apiece."  [They were in section 728.  Face value - €40]

"Eighty?  Nah..."

"Wait!  Wait, wait, wait... how much do you want to spend?"

"We saw them on top of the hill for fifty-five."

"Okay, okay, sixty-five for these then."

"Nah, we'll just walk back up there and buy them off the other guy."

"This is fookin' Hogan Stand!!!"

"They're way up high though."  [I knew nothing about Croke Park, actually, but I know that there is no stadium on earth where Section 728 is close to the field.]

"They're not WAY up high... they're like RIGHT THERE!!!"  [Gesturing with his hands]

"It's 728 man.  Don't bullshit me."

"This is fookin' HOGAN STAND!!!"  [This meant nothing to me, for what it's worth.]

"Nah, we'll pass."

"Okay, okay, okay, sixty then."

"Fifty-five."

[Long pause]  "Fine.  Fifty-five."  [I peeled off €110 and prepared to make the exhange.]

"Okay then."

"Come on!  Just give us the sixty!!!"

"I have to pay for my parking up there.  I need the other ten."  [I had €15 left in my hand at this point.]

"Well then give us the fiver."

"You're gonna make me swim back to America, man.  The deal was fifty-five."

"But these are fookin' Hogan Stand!!!  Give us the fiver."

"Fifty-five, man.  Do we have a deal?"

He handed over the tickets.  I handed over the money.

We picked up the rules of Gaelic football as we walked back up the hill to buy more parking.  (I really did need that €15.  By the time I bought a few candy bars to break it down into coins, I had just enough left to buy the necessary time.)  Four steps, bounce the ball... four steps, kick the ball... three for a goal, one for a kick through the uprights... we had the general idea.  After we bought our new parking ticket and started back down toward the stadium, we realized that everybody in Dublin was wearing the colors of one of the teams - except for us.  I actually have ancestors from County Mayo, so my loyalty probably should have gone to the red and green.  But you know what they say.  "When in Rome..."

We bought a couple of blue-on-blue caps from a street vendor, then finished the walk into the stadium.  The atmosphere was absolutely awesome.  My brother grabbed a couple of beers and we headed for our seats.  "Sorry guys," said the nice lady at the entrance to the seating area, "You can't come in with the drinks."  So we had to stand in the concourse while he drank his beers, then head inside.

The match was about two minutes old by the time we got settled into our seats.  We were promptly lectured by a gal to our left.  Since we were wearing Dublin colors, we were expected to act accordingly.  Apparently the Dublin faithful are always in their seats before the action starts.  They refuse to miss a single play.  (I had to resist the temptation to give her a hard time when the second half began and she was two minutes late getting to her seat.)

Mayo won the match on this occasion, but we really had an awesome time.  As much as I hate soccer, I expected to dislike Gaelic football.  It's a whole different deal though.  The action is non-stop.  It's like a blend of basketball, soccer, football, and rugby, but with very little of the soccer influence involved.  Long story short - we really like Gaelic football now.  Dublin lost, unfortunately, so we backed the wrong horse.  But we're Dublin fans now - for life.  That's just how it goes.

So now let's talk about Hogan Stand.  I had no idea what that jagoff meant when he kept saying it during the ticket negotiation.  (See the picture on the left, by the way.  Those seats were way up high, just as I suspected they would be.)  When we got back to our hotel at the end of the night, I got on the internet and looked up the phrase 'hogan stand.'  In practical terms, it's just the name of the stands on one side of the field.

In other terms though... damn.  Apparently the British whacked a bunch of civilians at Croke Park back in 1920, in retaliation for a bunch of assassinations that the IRA pulled off the night before.  One of the dudes that they killed was the captain of the Tipperary football team - Michael Hogan.  Hence the name - Hogan Stand.  Doesn't change the fact that the seats were about what I thought they would be, but it does explain some of the reverence that those people feel for the name.

So... what I'm trying to say is... this is Hogan Stand!!!

I knew it all along...

"In what appears to be a slap in the face for gender equality, the report found the divorce rate among couples who shared housework equally was around 50 per cent higher than among those where the woman did most of the work."

Read it and weep, modern couples.  It turns out that the key to happiness is probably to get that broad back in the kitchen.

Remember when I told you something was big news?

You know, back before I started getting all excited about football season and so forth.  If not, here's a reminder.  It's a really short post.  Go ahead and read it.  I'll wait.

Well, today's news is just as bad, maybe worse.  They've revised Q2 GDP growth downward from a pitiful 1.7% to a jaw-droppingly bad 1.3%.  This is after the $6 trillion in new debt that our genius leaders have thrown at the problem handed out to their political allies over the last few years.  These are simply awful results.  There's no other way to put it.  It's even getting hard to accept the argument that things would have been worse if we hadn't taken on all that new debt.

On top of that, we get the news that durable goods orders fell 13.2% in August.  This is really, really, really bad news.  Have you ever seen those old videos of rockets that start to launch and then fall backward onto the launch pad?  For whatever reason, those rockets failed to achieve escape velocity - the speed necessary to escape the earth's gravitational pull.  This economy is looking like the rocket at the top of the flight, struggling to keep moving before it starts to drift backward and explodes.  It's not going backward yet, but the speed is getting dangerously close to zero.

How do you suspect they'll report this one on the television news tonight?

Fun with Photoshop

This one was requested on a message board today, so I went ahead and threw it together.  A little quick and sloppy,  but it will get the point across just fine.  I'm not going to spend an hour on a mean-spirited joke.  Five minutes?  Yeah.  I have five minutes.

Bet the house on Michigan

I think Notre Dame will give up a few big plays to Denard Robinson, but will also generate a few turnovers.  Without Tommy Rees at quarterback, turning the ball over to Michigan repeatedly, the Irish should be able to control the clock and keep Michigan's offense off the field.

Defensively, even with Tommy Rees at quarterback for the Irish, Michigan really didn't stop Notre Dame at all last year.  This year, Michigan's defense is worse.  So you can do the math on that one.

I figure something like 34-24 in favor of Notre Dame sounds about right.  This probably means that Michigan will win, but screw it.  That's why they play the games.  And that's why people like me get to be cocky for a few hours before we have our hopes crushed once again.

Pure Michigan

I don't know if you heard it here first or not

But there's no reason for Saturday's game to be close.  Alabama beat these guys by 27.  Notre Dame is no Alabama, to be certain, so let's not get confused here.  I don't expect Notre Dame to win by four touchdowns.  I do expect Notre Dame to dominate the line of scrimmage, much more so than they did against a pretty damned good MSU defensive line.

I'll digest my thoughts over the next day or two before making a prediction (that will most likely be horribly wrong) here, but for now...

This one is pretty good.

Summary of the moment's thoughts