I can't quibble with its status as a word, either the slang for "pizza" (mind, I don't know anyone who calls it that, just as I can't wrap my head around a plausible pronunciation of "puter" - is it a homophone for "pewter"?) or if you insist as a Japanese trade guild.
Even so, it adds a lot of variance to the letter "Z" in certain word games (and Facebook apps that mimic those games). QI also has this effect.
(Neither Scrabble nor Scrabulous agrees with my claim that "zen" is often used as a common noun; then again Firefox doesn't recognize it as a correctly spelled word either.)
(The bison intimidate the bison who intimidate the bison who [...])
Buffalo probably can't make a comeback, and more to the point the money spent trying to restore a place is wasted compared to money spent improving the lives of people.
On the other hand, Gregg Easterbrook is implicitly surprised that corporations don't flock to "top-quality housing stock at far below the median U.S. price, ideal summer weather, a strong cultural scene, the last open-for-development urban waterfront in the United States, a human-scale city where you never waste one second of your life stuck in traffic jams."
Easterbrook left out the part about the high taxes, not to mention the relatively low % of locals with college degrees.
How soon did you spot the fundamental flaw in the first two paragraphs of this piece (the "fatal" flaw? ha!)?
In paragraph four we learn that the author apparently has too much tunnel vision to even contemplate euthanasia at the exact moment when it needs to be contemplated. (The subsequent paragraph has a particularly egregious deflection of responsibility: When she writes "Sabra had no such luck," she really means "Sabra's owner is ssslllooowww.")
FULL DISCLOSURE: We do have a cat. A few months ago we took her to a feline dermatologist, where we managed to get a bill for almost exactly the same amount I was paying in monthly rent four years ago. I regret none of this: She seemed to have allergies but now we're 99% sure she doesn't; we got a diagnosis (her symptoms aren't nearly as bad as the usual case, which is part of why it was a challenging case) and neither she nor we are suffering.
I doubt we'll ever take a dead animal to the vet, and I can tell you now that we'll NEVER EVER have a sudden in-car epiphany after dropping an animal off for tests that it was too bad we didn't think of euthanasia. Reject it, maybe, but to just slap your head as if you could've had a V8? Maybe Dahlia Lithwick isn't the most brain-dead Slate writer after all.
This is why I still read the work of Bill Simmons despite the level of self-caricature he sometimes achieves. Simmons on how McCarver would analyze things from within a particular car commercial:
"John, here's the thing about our country -- it might be a country that belongs to folks like you and me, but the key to this country is that we fought two major World Wars in the 20th century, and each time, we defeated foes who could have potentially conquered democracy inside our borders. Had we NOT won those wars, this might not be our country right now. (Dramatic pause.) But we DID win those wars. And when you win wars, usually, with very few exceptions, you get to keep your country. That's why ... This is ouuuuuuur country."
It's funny because it's true, and it's sad because it's funny.
McCarver was my favorite broadcaster when I was ten years old. But I was an unusually pedantic, tendentious, and all-around annoying ten year old. At that age I probably could have done his schtick yet not realized why it was so grating.
If Colbert's campaign (and the Federal Election Commission's reaction to it) brings more attention to some of this country's absurd campaign finance laws, and if some of the more egregiously unconstitutional ones are repealed, then I'll consider him a hero (without irony).
(I shudder to imagine that his alter ego might think that someone like me would already ironically think of him as a hero.)
Is Ruby paying any rent? If not, then I'm completely with Margo on the upcoming cat fight.
UPDATE: On the other hand, Ruby can live. April (FBoFW) and Vera (Mary Worth) both must die of melodrama.
UPDATE2: On the third hand this week's Sally Forth is awesome. It puts the actual soap opera strips to shame.
So for legitimate work reasons I'm on the e-mail list of Peach DVD, an adult video company whose talent is 100% female. Every so often they send promo e-mail for new releases.
Girlfriends: Brazilian Lovers 3
The cover models both look flat chested. From the camera angle no idea what their backsides are like. This seems to be a historically inaccurate depiction of Brazil's standards of beauty.
Secrets of the White Room
"Something inexplicable happens to women when they enter The White Room: they are overcome with a powerful erotic energy and lose all of their inhibitions." There was actually a Get Smart episode (guest-starring Carol Burnett!) with a room exactly like that (30-second gag, not central to the plot).
The Jenna Jameson Gold Collection
Forgive me for being naive but what's so special about her? Is she just the pr0n star whose name everyone happens to know? Which well-known athlete has a career arc in his or her sport that most closely resembles Jameson's?
(Godwin's law defined and made fun of: Yes, I know that despite the latter punchline the Law only relates to the probability of a reference, not its appropriateness.)
Is this a new low for Frank Rich? (I can only hope that various political blogs were all over this several days ago.) You won't find the magic word if you CTRL-F, but you might as well.
The offensive part of the central conceit (comparing "Good Americans" now to "Good Germans" 65 years ago) is that he doesn't bother to make any cogent arguments about it, instead leaving it out there as red meat that induces people to read the rest of his litany. If he were making constructive use of that conceit, he'd bother to tell us what he expects "Good Americans" to do instead of what they're (we're) already doing.
He cites the messed-up procurement system that led to troops without armored vehicles and blames Rumsfeld for being callous about it: I can buy calling him out for sabotaging the war effort, but then that means "Good Americans" have a duty to... sabotage it further?
Young men with bright futures are in harm's way -- does the "Good American" have a duty to join them, or a duty not to?
The tax rates are too low for a country at war (so says Rich) -- does the "Good American" voluntarily pay twice as much, perhaps enclosing a handwritten anti-government screed with the check?
Most of the things he complains about are civil liberties violations: the Bush administration is too pro-snooping, for example. Of course it's completely legitimate to compare all of this to a regime that packed a bunch of people onto trains and sent them to camps to be gassed or starved.
I think the column speaks for itself as to whether Rich even intended to change the mind of anyone who disagreed with him; and inasmuch as he's preaching to the choir, one can strongly infer that the "Good Americans" he mocks are third-person, not first-person.
Without looking (or already happening to know): Guess who's going to London (at Fox's expense) to do play-by-play on the Giants-Dolphins game?
(I would have needed five guesses even given that Joe Buck is in Boston.)
The first letter in the latest Savage Love begins: "I think my 5-year-old nephew is probably gay."
I can see making that judgment call at 15, even at 10. But at five?
The crux of the letter is that the writer's brother has prohibited the kid from playing dress-up or watching Broadway musicals, things the kid wants to do at his aunt's house.
"Question 1: Is it even possible to tell the sexual preference of a child so young?"
I'm skeptical of Savage's claim that "There's a 99 percent chance your nephew is gay," but then Savage is gay and I'm not, so what do I know? (With the VERY limited second-hand information available, I'd put the probability around 70%, much of which is trusting the writer's hunch. I certainly wouldn't go higher than that.)
"Question 2: Is it wrong for me to indulge my nephew even though my brother (his parent) has told me that he doesn't want my nephew doing those things?"
In theory yes, if only because child-to-adult "secrets" are often a telltale sign of sexual abuse. (I don't think the writer ever wants to be mistaken for a pederast.) In practice... for heaven's sake, let the kid watch Chicago. It won't make him any more or less gay than he would have been.
In short, let kids be kids.
This Onion AV Club article did not include my favorite police-themed song, but at least two commenters did mention it.
Maribeth has brought to our attention that Garrison Keillor has a stalker, whose letters described "graphically making love to" him.
I'd pay to hear Garrison Keillor recite obscene stories. I'd pay even more to hear him narrate obscene stories of his own creation.
I wonder if Frank of "Frank TV" has a Keillor impression.
Nate Silver rocks my world (find it for yourself).
Am I to understand that some of you are four wins away from getting money back from Jordan's Furniture?
Joe Mathlete explains Marmaduke. The October 2 entry is the hardest I've laughed in months. (For full effect, scroll down gradually, taking in the others along the way.)
P.S. My Baseball Think Factory screen name is "Marmaduke Ellington." (I post at best once in a blue moon.)
Warning: swear words after the jump.
The September 6 entry is especially priceless. "Marmaduke is an Asshole" is an even better alternate title for that strip than some Comics Curmudgeon commenter's suggestion ("Fuck You, I'm Marmaduke").
This Wikipedia article isn't half-bad (the text is not necessarily work-safe). It succeeds on both levels: Informative at face value, and unintentionally funny.
I'm speechless. That was pitch-perfect.
How long will it be before I can read Dave Barry, James Lileks, or any of an entire genre again?
This article was useless without a picture (co-ed columnist writes about trying out for Playboy but refusing to pose nude).
This article was worse with a picture (pants lawsuit judge not reappointed) -- I'd previously assumed that anyone that maliciously litigious had to be white.
On the other hand, this is the best picture I've seen today.
I'm floored. How was it even possible, given the quality of today's TMQ and today's Sports Guy, for this Tim Keown column to have the worst lead-in of the three (by a wide margin!)?
What part of "I [Paul Byrd] have a pituitary tumor, and disclosed my medical treatment to my team and to MLB the entire time I took it" did Keown (willfully) fail to understand? This column, and more than half the columns that led with the same topic, are almost exactly like the old middle school joke "Hey, I just took an aspirin. That means I just took DRUGS (omg lolz)!" -- except that they're all apparently dead serious.
It gets better when Keown decides to make fun of any Christian who wants to spread the word about why Christianity might be a good thing. I understand that many proselytizers are annoying and pushy, and that athletes who credit God for their success are especially annoying (paraphrasing from TMQ, Tony Dungy is dead right that God doesn't care about the outcome of sporting events). But we've reached the point in America where if you dare to even call yourself Christian, a large segment will deride you as a Jesus freak.
(DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT treating that last paragraph as some piece of martyrdom, or breaking out the world's smallest violin. This isn't about having a pity party; it's about how absurdly spiteful and hateful some people off when they vastly overstate their reasons for mocking any given person's religion.)
Getting back to Keown's medical slander (rather than his religious slander):
"There's been an eerie [...] pattern to the leakage of names, especially when it comes to HGH. [...] It's probably best not to speculate -- the lawyers hate that -- but there's a good chance a few World Series participants are promising to be good for a long, long time if they can just make it through the next 10 days without needing a news conference."
And here when I read the word "eerie" I thought he might actually start to question the timing of some of these suspiciously timed leaks. But no, instead he decides to lob innuendo at 50 players at once. After all, it's not as though any of them have reputations to uphold (though doing this after he's already made fun of people who dare defend their own honor is a nice rhetorical touch).
Keown, not that you'd have any reason to read this blog, but you're chicken-shit.
Therefore, I should have known better than to savor the delicious irony of J.D. Drew's Game 6 grand slam and its effect on one particular sports writer.
The entire second half of this column makes me want to bang my head repeatedly against a brick wall. (This after the man joked about naming a kid after Josh Beckett but was too much of a yuppie frou-frou to make the commonsense decision that "Josh" is a first name and "Beckett" in fact is not.)
I don't know which would be worse: That he were the effect of the Conventional Wisdom, or that he were the cause.
While we're here riffing on ESPN columns, has Easterbrook finally lost it? Chad & I traded plenty of e-mail about this column, wherein he confirmed that yes, RCA Dome can be called "antiquated" despite its being built in 1983; and yes, even though Easterbook egregiously compared apples to oranges, a punt return TD is more likely than a successful Hail Mary pass if the distance to the goal line exceeds the quarterback's arm range.
(Here's why I call it: Haily mary situations only come up every few games, whereas any given game should feature a good half-dozen punt return opportunities. So "once a week versus once a decade" is quite the non sequitur. Heck, I've been to twice as many Raider games as weddings.)
As for TMQ's Harry Potter reference Chad reminded me that the character in question died before passing through the arch, and that if such dark magic existed it would probably be hard to destroy (therefore some locked room in the Ministry of Magic, close to people who could study it but away from the general public, is the PERFECT place for it).
Coming full circle to the subject line (both Red Sox and CW): About two weeks ago I heard someone in an office break room express the hope for a Yankee-Red Sox ALCS on the grounds that no other match-up would be nearly as interesting. I nearly threw up in my mouth. More recently I heard a different person claim that Boston hadn't been to the World Series in 80 years -- from context they meant "prior to 2004," and more importantly they really meant "won" rather than "been to," though it's unclear whether they knew the second part. (1986 wasn't that long ago, certainly more recent than 1954...)
Fans, in any given moment, do not induce their teams to play well or play poorly, at least not nearly to the extent that your latest column implies.
(Come to think of it: If they did, then you and your brethren would have a lot of 'splaining to do, for jinxing your own franchise all those decades with that negative attitude. For shame!)
EXCEPTION: Strategically, Cub fans can be blamed for their team's own drought, in that their unwavering support means the Tribune Company can turn a healthy profit without needing to waste dollars on the margin attempting to assemble championship-caliber rosters.
I had previously held 100% sympathy for the girl at the heart of this story. It never occurred to me that the complaining neighbor might be the lesser of the two a'holes. Her dad, a "public relations expert," seems to have anointed her as a graffiti artist.
The identity of the U.S. sudoku champ (pictured in the linked-to article) won't surprise anyone who read Jason Z's travelogue e-mails from Prague a few months ago.
"'If Dick Tracy will do it, so will I." That is probably the most dangerous statement ever made. The street will be lined with scalded bodies tonight." –evie oh oh
--runner up for Comics Curmudgeon Comment of the Week
Meanwhile the other day, people who euphemistically describe spam as "an e-mail blast" came up in conversation. If I were teaching basic philosophy and needed good framing devices for what the categorical imperative does(n't) cover, e-mail spam would make an interesting contrast to driving during rush hour.
For example, he's right about Halloween.
(And not affiliated with ESPN.com)
"With Rick joining Bill Simmons, our readers will now enjoy the two best sports columnists anywhere."
To what extent can thinking people debunk that claim? (THE two best?!)
As mentioned here, I'll start with King Kaufman for the low-hanging fruit.
In the red trunks: Richard Mellon Scaife.
In the blue trunks: Ron Burkle.
Even if the death match never happens they can argue about which one will have had the messier divorce.
UPDATE: Which is more astonishing, that Burkle has never been mentioned on Fark, or that Scaife never had been until today?
"In today’s America, there are more World of Warcraft players than farmers." -- Kung Fu Monkey (via Marginal Revolution by way of Paul Krugman and Nicholas Beaudrot)
There are probably also more iPod owners than doctors and lawyers combined.
I believe the Census Bureau treats farming as an occupation; World of Warcraft, not so much. (Many people play WoW for an hour or two per week; I can't picture people "farming" that sporadically.)
This would be a non-issue if so many otherwise brilliant people hadn't gee-whiz'd it.
After reading this story yesterday I meant to mention that no sympathy or empathy was ever generated from a sentence that simplifies to "My dad made you what you are." It's not terribly removed from a sentiment like "My dad could beat up your dad."
I eschewed that post partly for time, partly because I honestly didn't know anything about Joe Torre's dad, especially whether he were still alive. But then today I skimmed Goldman on Torre:
It’s also likely that Torre defined himself in opposition to his father, “a volatile New York City police detective who slapped the Torre kids around every chance he got,” in the words of Maury Allen. Torre was anything but volatile, and it’s probable that whatever George Steinbrenner tried to do to bully Torre, he had already seen worse. If there was a negative side to this, it’s that Torre was sometimes patient to the point of passivity.
(Honorable mention to the urban legend that he was breast-fed until age four -- but only if that were true, and we have no way to confirm or deny.)
Manny Ramirez: He can hit, he can play defense in his home park, he’s smarter than any of us give him credit for—lost in the hullaballoo over his off-day comments was that he was absolutely, without a doubt, correct—and he seems to love playing baseball. He’s almost a bright-line test for humankind; if you just divided the world into “people who like Manny Ramirez” and “everyone else,” which group would you rather hang out with?
--Joe Sheehan
(On ESPN)
All ten pass the smell test. #5 (1978 Yankees) and #4 (1951 Giants) both seem overrated compared to the rest. I think Nate Silver has assigned probabilities in the past to most of these. I was about to scoff at #1 until I remembered (though Neyer didn't mention) that Game 4 went to the bottom of the ninth with the best post-season reliever in baseball history protecting a one-run lead.
Colts, Jaguars to be updated after Monday (some teams around them may shift by one).
32. St. Louis (0-7) (Last week: 32) Marc Bulger also isn't who he used to be. (Week 8: vs. Cleveland)
31. Miami (0-7) (Last week: 31) Great job losing your best RB on a play that began with a 35-point deficit. (Week 8: vs. NY Giants at London)
30. San Francisco (2-4) (Last week: 29) For a team that started this year 2-0, this squad is terrible on both sides of the ball. (Week 8: vs. New Orleans)
29. Atlanta (1-6) (Last week: 30) Preposterous punt. (Week 8: bye)
28. NY Jets (1-6) (Last week: 27) Touchdown at the buzzer to make it look closer than it was. (Week 8: vs. Buffalo)
27. Oakland (2-4) (Last week: 28) Almost like a gatekeeper between the atrocious teams and the merely below-average. (Week 8: at Tennessee)
26. Houston (3-4) (Last week: 22) The Sage Rosenfels era almost brought us something awesome. If it continues, it might not continue well. Then again Norv Turner is on the opposite sideline, and I'd been letting the Chargers drift upward as though he didn't exist. (Week 8: at San Diego)
25. Buffalo (2-4) (Last week: 25) Still not as bad as people think, but now actually turning "not as bad as people think" into a win or two. (Week 8: at NY Jets)
24. Cleveland (3-3) (Last week: 24) Bye. (Week 8: at St. Louis)
23. Cincinnati (2-4) (Last week: 20) Won a game yet lost three notches, partly for falling behind at home to a bad team, partly because I'd underrated the Chiefs before. (Week 8: vs. Pittsburgh)
22. New Orleans (2-4) (Last week: 21) Won a game yet lost a notch. It's the "close game at home vs. the Falcons" rule. (Week 8: at San Francisco)
21. Kansas City (4-3) (Last week: 23) Hey, sole possession of first place in the AFC West! (Week 8: bye)
20. Detroit (4-2) (Last week: 26) I could see 8-8. Interesting test next week whether more than that is plausible. The game at Philly looks like more and more of an aberration (and not just the uniforms!). (Week 8: at Chicago)
19. Carolina (4-2) (Last week: 19) Bye. (Week 8: vs. Indianapolis)
18. Minnesota (3-3) (Last week: 18) Hint: Use Adrian Peterson more. (Week 8: vs. Philadelphia)
17. Philadelphia (2-4) (Last week: 13) Uncanny how they keep finding ways to give games away. (Week 8: at Minnesota)
16. Denver (3-3) (Last week: 17) Got it done at home. Interesting to see how the Rockies' hoopla affects them. (Week 8: vs. Green Bay)
15. Arizona (3-4) (Last week: 15) Didn't quite get it done on the road. A familiar story this season. (Week 8: bye)
14. Washington (4-2) (Last week: 16) Recap, first sentence: "In the final 30 seconds, the Arizona Cardinals used three quarterbacks, scored a touchdown, failed on a 2-point conversion, recovered an onside kick and barely -- just barely -- missed a 55-yard field goal." (Week 8: at New England)
13. Chicago (3-4) (Last week: 14) Nice drive! (Week 8: vs. Detroit)
12. Seattle (4-3) (Last week: 11) Life is hard: You walk all over an opponent yet fall a spot. That's just how bad the Rams are. (Week 8: bye)
11. Baltimore (4-3) (Last week: 6) "Only this high by default" = red flag. (Week 8: bye)
10. Tampa Bay (4-2) (Last week: 7) Before the season began I'd planned to take Detroit in this game in Barker's cut-throat league. Switching away from the Lions (and onto Oakland) was a mistake. (Week 8: vs. Jacksonville)
69. Jacksonville (4-2) (Last week: 10) Quinn Gray didn't fare well. (Week 8: at Tampa Bay)
98. Tennessee (4-2) (Last week: 9) Well sure, that's one way to win a road game in your division. In theory they should get docked for almost blowing a 25-point lead, but they recovered with aplomb, they had their backup quarterback in, etc. (Week 8: vs. Oakland)
87. San Diego (3-3) (Last week: 8) Bye. (Week 8: vs. Houston)
76. NY Giants (5-2) (Last week: 12) To be sure they demolished a bad team. But momentum matters in the NFL, as does Brandon Jacobs re-establishing himself. Another bad opponent coming up. (Week 8: "at" Miami (at London))
5. Pittsburgh (4-2) (Last week: 3) They needed that 12-play, six-minute drive to last about seven minutes. If you think they should be lower, ask yourself who gets this spot instead. (Week 8: at Cincinnati)
4. Green Bay (5-1) (Last week: 5) Bye. (Week 8: at Denver)
3. Dallas (6-1) (Last week: 4) Some odd coaching on both sides. (Week 8: bye)
2. Indianapolis (6-0) (Last week: 2) It'd be funny if they beat the Patriots twice this year and the Manning/Brady talking points completely swapped. (Week 8: at Carolina)
1. New England (7-0) (Last week: 1) More of the same. (Week 8: vs. Washington)
...but this new Microsoft commercial sent its coffin about 30 feet further into the ground. (You all did recognize Poison's finest anthem, right?)
Jake Westbrook was drafted by the Colorado Rockies (as I type this he's not doing a great job of seeing to it that this would be cited as useless trivia a week from now), then traded to Montreal in a package with two other minor leaguers for Mike Lansing.
The Loria-run Expos sent him and players to be named later to the Yankees for Hideki Irabu, after it was already clear he was a flop. One of the PTBNL was Ted Lilly.
(And then he was part of a package the Yankees sent the Indians for David Justice.)
Q. "DID YOU TAKE DRUGS?!?!?"
A. Um, yeah. I have a prescription, for my pituitary condition. My team knows about it, the league knows about it, there's even a chapter about it in my upcoming book.
Q. "CHEATER! CHEATER! CHEATER! And here your team is about to play Game 7..."
Various updates:
1. No idea why my left navigation is acting up.
2. I love that some columns about this are describing Byrd's "alleged" HGH use. He's confirmed that he took it and explained why he did.
3. There's some cognitive dissonance here between how I feel about baseball players and how I feel about some of the people who get special treatment for standardized tests. For example, I do tend to think that if you're given extra time (or took a drug that was prescribed to you but wouldn't be to your peers), that information should be disclosed along with the score itself. Call it an "asterisk," call it what you will.
(On the other hand, the very public consensus that Barry Bonds took steroids actually is the "asterisk" in his case. Further annotation is redundant, unless you honestly think that by 50 years from now the Hall of Fame will have survived but the Internet won't have.)
Julie Stahlhut asked this question via Facebook. My answer here differs from the one there because "Joe Buck" was a lame throwaway spur-of-the-moment (couldn't think of anyone better). Also, this time a hierarchy (my #1 below is the one I didn't think of until he came up in conversation today).
1. Che
2. Paris
3. Bono
One more NY Times link, this time not about presidential candidates. This story contains a lot of soldier impressions, both good and bad. (An example of the good, with a paragraph break removed: "Re-enlistment rates across the brigade are running above the Army’s goals, and soldiers in six platoons said in interviews that they still loved their jobs: the camaraderie, the sense of mission, the ability to play a role in history. It also helps, they said, that they will head back to Fort Drum in New York with a sense of accomplishment.") Sometimes the order of paragraphs alone says a lot about the writer's (editor's?) own view.
I have to wonder about some of the people who'd let particular war stories change their minds (or about some of the people whose minds are already made up, but who actually hope that particular war stories change other people's minds): It's not exactly a novel concept that some very bad things happen in the course of war.
(If anything, a new wrinkle to this Iraq War (and the Gulf War before it) is how much lower the casualty rate is and how many fewer horrible things are happening. World War II was the quintessential "just war," yet we (for example) firebombed Dresden.)
To be sure, there's always a trade-off, an evaluation of whether what we want to accomplish is worth the cost -- and the cost grows the longer we're over there (so if you expected in 2003 that we'd be out of there by 2007, that's a good reason to say "hey, wait a minute..."). But I feel sorry for anyone who has an epiphany like "OMG LOL I guess they really have it bad over there."
This is month-old news but who lets his cell phone interrupt his own speech? This story has no redeeming virtue.
On the other hand, people who use "Hello?!" as a sarcastic retort are among the most annoying twits on Earth. I shouldn't have been the least bit surprised which presidential candidate has this most unfortunate habit.