1. It’s not at Ground Zero. It’s like 6 blocks away or something. So the name is completely wrong. When I first heard of it, i was wondering why they were putting a Mosque on Ground Zero. But as it turned it out, no mosque on ground zero. Strike One.

2. I heard on MSNBC it’s not just a mosque, but a community center that happens to have a mosque in it. Kind of like how Wall Drug has a Travelers Chapel in it. Wall Drug isn’t a church, it’s a shopping center with a chapel in it. This specific place will have a basketball court and kitchen in it. Holy crap, they might beat us at basketball. That’s just wrong….

3. It’s private property. No matter where the property is, people have a right to do what ever they want on, with it, etc. Conservatives worried about big government are being a bunch of moronic hypocrites by saying that they want the government to interfere with the development of private property. As long as my tax dollars aren’t funding it, I don’t really care what they do with it.

4. Jon Stewart ran a clip of the Fox Newsies saying it’s not about intolerance, it’s about sensitivity. I can kind of understand that, but 9/11 was almost 10 years ago. If this was October 2001, I would completely understand that call to be more sensitive. I just wonder how much time is really needed to mourn the death of people? My grandmother died in 2003 (about a year and a half after 9/11) and we all had our mourning period, but at some point you really have to move on with your life and not dwell on something terrible that happened. Yeah, we still miss grandma, but we’ve accepted it and have moved on. I would think that most of the people who had friends and family killed on 9/11 have finished mourning and have moved on with their lives. Of course, I could be completely wrong here….

5. There was a protest in NYC at the so called Mosque. Who are these people that are protesting anyways? I just wonder where do they come from. It seems like hundreds or thousands of people get together to protests such silly stuff. I wonder who is herding these people around like cattle or sheep and telling them when and where to protest. I just don’t believe that it would be spontaneous, especially not that big of a group, so somebody has to be running this thing. I just wonder if it’s the Tea Party organizers, since that had attempted to give the appearance of being spontaneous, but when someone investigated it, well not so much.

Today, the Pirates signed their first two draft picks and their 15th rounder. The first two picks were ranked #2 and #15 by Baseball America before the draft. Allie fell to the 2nd round for some dumb reason. Mostly cheap teams (like the Cubs and Yankees) passing up on him to get cheap picks. The Pirates jumped on him and was able to get him to sign for $2.25 million. Taillon was the 2nd overall pick after Bryce Harper. And according teh twitterz, he’s getting $6 million. Throw in the $485,000 that Drew Maggi got and the Pirates signed three guys for less than $9 million when everyone was saying the Pirates would get Taillon and Allie for no less than $9 million. They might go out and get someone else before the deadline, but who knows?

Then to top it off, the Pirates won the game tonight. James McDonald continues to do well in Pittsburgh since coming over from the Dodgers in the Dotel trade. I’d just like to thank Ned Colletti for developing a player for the Pirates. It always sucks when you’re GM and you have to do all the work yourself. It’s nice to have Ned around to get him to do the work for ya and then give you good players for the baseball equivilent of stale table scraps.

Finally, the Pirates lost former General Manager great Joe L. Brown yesterday afternoon. He was the General Manager who made the Pirates in the 60′s and 70′s. He was the archetict behind the 1960 and 1971 World Series wining Pirates. He retired after the 1976 season. When the Pirates won the 1979 World Series, his fingerprints were all over that team. Most notably Stargell, Park, Kison, Don Robinson and such.

While the Pirates were going through a major drug scandal and a 100 loss season, Brown took over as General manager on an interim bases in 1985 and drafted Barry Bonds and was able to get Syd Thrift to take over on a full time fro the net three season. Retired again, he went back to California where he became a scout for the Pirates and helped scout Jason Kendall back in the early 90′s.

Other than that. Somedays are just way too short.

Pretty much this video’s equal.

Too bad Steve Blass and Greg Brown made such idiots of themselves tonight on the radio side….

Instead, the Pirates traded DJ Carrasco, Ryan Church, Bobby Crosby, Javier Lopez and Octavio Dotel for Chris Snyder, Pedro Ciriaco, John Martinez, John Bowker, James McDonald and Andrew Lambo. Essentially the Pirates traded their 3-5th best relievers and two older bench guys for a Catcher who can play everyday and not be as sucky as Doumit has been this year, another middle IF that has a limited ceiling, an average bullpen arm, a Crash Davis type player, a starter who needs playing time and an OF with big potential and some marijuana “problems”. Not a great haul, but a good one for what they had.

Of course every fan of any team that makes a deal likes to say “We Won on trade deadline day!”

In the old days the definition of winning a war was killing people and breaking things. In the old days, there was no such thing a “surgical strike.” In the old days, you purposely killed innocent civilians. That’s what war was all about.

Wow. Really? So maybe, since Al Quada and the Taliban started the war on 9/11, that we shouldn’t feel so bad about 9/11. I mean, killing innocent civilians is what war is all about. We should just accept it and move on with our lives because everyone who died on 9/11, it was just what happens in war and that’s the whole point. To kill as many innocent civilians as you can. So, good job on 9/11 guys. You really got us there. You all are doing a great job on your side of the war and stuff. And really, we’re not doing too badly either. In fact, we are totally winning because there are some reports out there saying that over half a million people have died in Iraq alone.

Not sure how Rush Limbaugh would know anyways. Wasn’t he a draft dodger?

So overall, a very good season for me (or at least a very lucky one). I went 3-1 at Pirates games this year. So this is the first winning season for games I was at since 2004 (when I went 2-1). So yeah, yah for me.

As soon as the game ended, I was out of the ballpark and in my car not too long after that. Since I had everything packed and was checked out of the hotel that morning, I just started driving. And I drove from about 4:30 until about 10:00 at night. I stopped at Elkhart, Indiana. Never heard of this place before, but apparently it’s only a couple thousand people smaller than Dubuque. I can now understand how some people have never heard of Dubuque before. Even though Dubuque rocks the fucking house.

Then the Pirates bats came alive for seven runs the last four innings. It was amazing. It seemed like whenever they got a hit suddenly another guy would be getting a hit. Meanwhile, the four pitchers that ended the game the last four innings (Donnelly, Meek, Hanrahan and Dotel) kept the Astros quiet. In fact, I took a look at the line-up in the 7th when Meek was on the mound and wondered if Bourn would be the last out because that would mean that Meek, Hanrahan and Dotel pitched a perfect 3 innings. Turns out it went just like that. Those three guys are like going to the bank. They always have da good stuff. And Lopez, who gave up the lead in the 5th got the W. Wins and Losses are not a real stat! Just like RBI!

Then came the awesomest fireworks show I ever saw. It really put the Dubuque and Cascade ones to shame with the sheer awesomeness of it all. I always sort of wondered why people would bother with Fireworks shows because the ones where I live just aren’t that impressive. But these ones certainly proved to be otherwise.

Before the game there was the meeting of a gang of guys from the BucsDugout website and hanging around with them. There were also people there from a Pittsburgh message board site called “Pittsburgh Sports Tavern”. Much like high school, the two websites later on sort of divided off in the two cliques. Since the two websites have different formats, it kind of made sense.

Another cool thing is that the Stats Geek guy from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette must have got wind about the gathering and came over and talked to us for a while. He was a very cool guy. He told me about the book he wrote and I told him about the farm and Iowa and he explained why the drinking laws in Pennsylvania were so insanely prohibitionist.

Everyone was very impressed that I came here all the way from Iowa, as though that was some sort of huge achievement. The next furthest away guy came from Chicago.

The most exciting part was meeting WTM, a guy who is basically a guru-know it all when it comes to minor league players. I was shocked by his age, because I thought he’d be a younger guy about my age and he turned out to be a lot older than that, probably about my father’s age. The only disappointment was not having the BucsDugout “editor in-chief” Charlie there. Charlie is a Pittsburgh guy who now lives in San Diego, so that would be a huge trip for him to make and he was just in da Burgh a few weeks ago. But for most everyone else, it was nice to put names on the blog to faces.

One guy, CaptainAwesome kept calling me Cave Man. It came from the fact that my screen name is IAPiratesFan. I thought it seemed pretty obvious that it meant Iowa Pirates Fan. He thought it was some sort of cave man talk “I a Pirates fan!” because he couldn’t fathom someone from Iowa being a Pirates fan.

Oh, something stupid at this hotel. It doesn’t have ice machines in the hallways. Instead, the brilliant guys who run this place have fridges in the rooms that produce ice. But if you want a lot of ice, you have to turn it on several hours before you can get any ice. Stupid! People need lots of ice for their coolers if they’re driving a lot. But otherwsie, great hotel. Lots of nice parking and nice rooms and uh, yeah. Cool.

So tomorrow afternoon is game 3. If it’s turning in to a huge blow out by the Astros (which seems possible since it’s Maholm vs. Oswalt) I might duck out a bit early and start to head on home. Otherwise by this time tomorrow night I’ll be somewhere in Indiana or Ohio.

I heard that Dave Parker was going to be in the HOF Club after the game for 1/2 hour. It was cool meeting someone so famous. Sure he’s not the most famous ballplayer ever or even the most famous Pirate ever, but had he controlled his weight and not done so much cocaine, he might be a Hall of Famer these days.

After that, Rocco DeMaro was doing his post-game show in the HOF Club and there was Neal Huntington getting interviewed. I wanted to go back to the hotel, but I stayed and listened to Neal talk about draft signings and that 15 year old pitcher in Mexico the Pirates might sign. When I decided to leave, Neal was coming back and so I basically walked right past him.

Also, during the game, hung out with another guy who hangs out at BucsDugout. I ended up getting really kick ass seats near RF for the two of us. They were awesome seats because we were pretty much right next to the field and they were only $26 each. Take that you idiots at Yankee Stadium paying hundreds of dollars per seat. You people are suckers. Almost as big of suckers as the guys who waste time watching the Pirates these days.

In the ticket line, I heard two guys complain about how bad the team is. If they suck so much and you hate them so much, why are you here? Then there was a guy in front of me saying that he can’t stand the people who have given up on the Bucs because the day in the distant future when the Bucs start winning, then all those people will be back and taking up all the good seats at PNC Park.

The stadium tour was nice. We got to sit in the pressbox, the dugout and saw the batting cage. The guide told us that the turf in the cage was left over from TRS. Saw all sorts of stuff. I’d say it’s about the same as the Busch Stadium tour.

Basically they went fishing for anyone who might be upset about immigration and used it to slam Obama. They found a guy who just couldn’t find a job. Then they had some sister from Marshalltown talking about it. Boring stuff.

But the thing that bothers me was that Kilmeade said “our commander in chief”. “Our” commander in chief? George Bush was not my commander in chief and neither is Obama! They are commander in chief of the military, for fuck sake. Stop using collectivist speak. It’s like saying “We invaded Iraq.” I didn’t do anything like that. The government did. Argh!

I just hate the way people include me in something that I never did.

UPDATE 12:15 PM: I forgot to put a link to the video. So here it is.

As for my car, all the highway miles made my car very fuel efficient. My car got about 36 MPG the last two fill ups. Most of the time it gets between 27 and 32. In an effort to defeat boredom, I kept checking it while driving. With a 11 gallon tank, I would be impressed when I got to the half way point and I had driven about 190 or 200 miles because usually it’ll be about 150 or 160 miles.

Also, one of my comments on YouTube is a top rated comment on the video of “Nuking the Fridge”. Check it out.

I just noticed this, but Futurama is a lot funnier when you have a bit to drink.