Isn't it funny how the rugged, go capitalism go, market solutions for everything types are now whining about government inaction in the face of the subprime mess? I guess losing one's shirt is only fair when it happens to other people.

Just watched the first episode of Hard Knocks, on HBO. I don't care one whit about the Chiefs, but it made for a great program.

American Idol for football players, I guess.

There's the standard mix of vets (Tony Gonzalez, Ty Law, Patrick Surtain, Eddie Kennison), rookies (Bowe from LSU, and a kid lineman from Camden, Turk something), and guys with issues (Kyle Turley, Priest Holmes).

It's going to be very interesting to follow. And unlike so called reality TV, you know this one is real.

I don't know why anyone has kids. Or a family. I am sick to death of everyone and everything. Except the girl with pretty shoes.

(Cue Vader's Theme)



Loss to the Angels, combined with ANOTHER YANKEE WIN, means the lead is 6.



(Stop Vader's Theme)



I have to put down something about the girl with the pretty shoes. I've been thinking about her non stop since Sunday. Flying from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, I saw a pleasant, attractive girl wearing really pretty shoes. She was a violinist, travelling with her mother, wearing a fairly short, pleated skirt. She was, how you say, not a size two, but very pleasing to the eye. She got her baggage at baggage claim

5-3, after doubles by Youkilis and Ortiz. Hopefully Le Gagne can hold 'em.

Well....bases loaded, nobody out, trailing Balmer again, 3-1. We better make some hay out of this.

August 1, 2007. They are 7 games behind. Gulp.

We need to put a hurtin' on the Orioles for the next two nights, then hopefully go out west and show up against Seattle and LA. Those games are going to be real toughies.

I love Eric Gagne-now. Great pickup, but I'm still thinking a bat would have been better. Oh well. Once more into the breach, dear friends.

In my head, I'm hearing Perry Farrell singing, "Here we GO....."

RIP Bill Walsh, too, can't forget that. Well, we got Gagne without giving up Ellsbury or Buchholz, so that's a clear win. I am somehow not convinced that we didn't need a bat, though. The offense is scaring me, and a loss to Baltimore while the Yankees smoke Chicago brings the lead back up to 7. That's not a lot of games against an offense that seems unstoppable and a rotation that with Philip Hughes is going to be hard to beat.

Since I'm simply too depressed to chronicle the continued mismanagement, frauds, perjuries, and crimes against humanity of the current President, on to sports:

The Garnett trade is fascinating. On paper, and healthy, the Celtics look solid-going 2-3-4 with Jesus Shuttlesworth, The Truth, and The Big Ticket means you can hang with anybody. But the lack of depth now means, if injured, they are going to look woeful.

The Phillies obtain Iguchi and Lohse while the Braves get Teixeira and the Mets get Castillo? The Phils are still in it, for the moment, but it doesn't look good.

The Red Sox? Well, 8 games is 8 games. But the Yankees are better than they were 2 months ago, and I'm not sure the Red Sox are.

Oh well.

Day off today. As August dawns tomorrow, we stand thusly:

BOS 64-41
NYY 56-49, 8gb

We take on Baltimore at home, then head out to Seattle on Friday, the same day I go out to Pittsburgh. Hoorah.

Trailing the damn Devil Rays 5-2. Three homers for 5 runs for them, one by Northeastern's own Carlos Pena. Top of the ninth.

The lead is nine over the Yankees, but they are winning (5-4) over the Birds.

This time next week I will be back home from ReplayCon 07, a tabletop baseball gathering in Pittsburgh. I am ridiculously excited about this, almost to the point of being too excited, where it couldn't possibly be good enough to live up to what I want it to be. There's something about a room full of people who have the same stupid obsession as you.

Flyout to center. One down.

It's stupid, in my precarious financial and personal life, to spend time and money on a hobby.

Gary Glover is pitching. I "owned" him in a tabletop fantasy league a few years ago. He was lousy for me then, and the entire Tampa pitching staff is lousy this year. But it's hard as heck to score 3 runs in one inning, even against crummy pitching.

I preordered Madden 2008 this year, which is something I haven't done in a while. I spend way too much money on crap like that.

Yankees lead 6-4.

Varitek, pinch hitting, drew a walk, and the Tampa announcers, typically, are whining. I forget how good the Boston announcers are sometimes when I have to listen to these idiots.

I'm thirsty, but I'm not going to get up, just in case the rally continues.

I think Bronx is Burning, on ESPN, is brilliant TV, even though I hate the Yankees. I hated them then and I hate them now, but the show is extraordinary. The book, which I HAD to have, is good too.

I am also pleased Hard Knocks is coming back on HBO. That was a really good show.

Strikeout, then force out at second. Sox lose.

We took two out of three, and lost to Kazmir, so that isnt all that bad, but you really have to beat Tampa. You do. You just do.

Sigh.

Another win, although a heart stopping one. Jonathan Papelbon loaded the bases with nobody out, leading 8-5, then went strikeout-double play to end it.

Another 12-2 laugher wouldn't have been too much to ask.

The Yanks keep winning, too, a 21-4 laugher today.

So we sail on, borne ceaselessly by the Sox...

The f*&king liar in chief does it again.

In an interview on the Post Politics Podcast, President Bush states that he "can't speak to" the complaints of his former Surgeon General.

Yes, you f^&king well can.

You say, "if anyone interferes with the public statements and actions of the surgeon general ever again, that person will be fired."

Then again, he said that about anyone involved in the Plame case, too, and that was a lie.

Well, two wins over the White Sox has me crawling back from the ledge, but the Yankees are still there, lurking in the weeds. Another 7-7 two week stretch, and it will be 4 games back, and then another, and it's a tie.

This team doesn't seem like a World Series team to me, somehow. They're not as good as their record, and they fall into these cataleptic spells at the plate sometimes that scare me. I think they ran up this record while the Yankees had a stretch of unbelievably bad baseball luck. The Yankees are getting the good luck, now, so if we don't straighten up, we're in trouble. More serious trouble than right now.

I stopped reading History of the English Speaking Peoples. I liked the author when he was on CSpan, but he is really proving to be a big time Bush apologist. I find it hard to believe what he's saying, even though it may be true, because he's capable of coming up with statements like the positive side of prisoner scandals like Abu Ghraib is that the malefactors were punished when the crimes were revealed.

Well, yes, it is a positive that Western armies have mechanisms for punishing soldiers who mistreat prisoners, while mistreating prisoners seems to be almost a requirement among the fanatics.

But make no mistake, Abu Ghraib was dealt with because it leaked. Were it not for Seymour Hersh, I am confident we would have never heard of that place. Of course, were it not for Seymour Hersh, we might still be in Vietnam.

Does anyone really, honestly believe that the Bush Administration would have brought this to light on its own?

It's almost boring to read about the criminal, savage, marauding evildoers in the White House. I have lost my capacity to feel outrage about what they do, which is a terrible thing. But it is exhausting, getting so angry at them all the time.

http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=wherehavealltheleadersgone

I read this book at my parents' house last weekend. An excellent read, and strong words coming from a rock ribbed conservative.

I can't even talk to people who support these idiots. I'm tired of being nice to them. I'm not ready to make nice, I'm not ready to back down.

The Aerosmith track on the John Lennon tribute album for Darfur is really cool-a reggae backdrop with Steven yawling in his inimitable style on the verses. Awesome stuff.
A lot of people in the baseball world fuss about the “one player per team” rule, and I have never really had a problem with it. The argument is that, if you have to include a Royal and a Ranger, some more deserving player on a better team, like, say, Kevin Youkilis, will wind up not making the team. That is undoubtedly true, but fans in those cities need someone to root for, too. It is the fan’s game, and there have been some seasons where the only reasons I tuned in was to watch the guy from my team play.
The stupidity of management at some companies boggles my mind. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, really, because I meet so many idiots in life, it only follows that those people have to work somewhere. But it is striking to do business with Apple, or Amazon, or Wegman’s, or Target, or Chick Fil A, or Starbucks, where they claim to be obsessed with customer service, and THEY ACTUALLY ARE, because their people prove it to me, every time I am a customer.
That is in contrast to my own company, who also claim to be obsessed with customers, and yet they refuse to actually do anything about it.
Yet another terrorist attack, this time in Scotland. Weren’t we fighting them there so we wouldn’t have to fight them here?
Devastating article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker about the Taguba Report. As anyone who has been paying attention to this administration could probably have guessed, the administration knew all about it way before the report was leaked, first denying its importance and then lying about when they learned of it. As Lewis Black says about France, as if you expected them to be any other fucking way at all.