Carnival of Madness

I just love that episode of South Park. I generally agree with what the show said. Drive the car you want or like or can afford and don’t tell people how much better you are than them because it’s a hybrid or bigger or more horse power or trendy or whatever. But yeah, funniest part for me is that Kyle says his dad spent a lot of time driving around and showing off the Hybrid. Yeah, he probably drives it around so much that he’s not saving money on gas.Also when they move, they rent one of those big U-Haul like trucks. I wonder how much gas one of those things drank up.

But generally, I might think about getting a hybrid if I could afford one. I mean, they’re expensive and it’ll take years to save money in gas that it would take to pay off the difference between a hybrid and regular car. If you’re a pizza guy or a traveling sales person; Hybrid might be a good investment. Otherwise, it’s best just to get a regular, at least as far as money goes.

Truly the greatest answer ever in the history of beauty pageants. Thanks to Jay Leno for showing that tonight.

Well the Atlanta Falcons lost their superstar QB because he’s a dumb ass.After the 1992 NLCS, it’s about time something goes wrong in Atlanta. I’m just waiting for John Schuerholz to take over as Baseball Commissioner and then have Bobby Cox retire at the same time. Then maybe finally the Braves will fall apart and have more than one losing season out of 16.

I’m so glad the Falcons, Hawks and Thrashers are all such jokes of sports Franchises right now.

As for Vick. I hope he enjoys prison because he’ll be one of the few violent criminals in this country to actually serve his full term. Meanwhile, non violent drug offenders clog up our prisons so that really violent people can get out on good behavior, but the non violent people can’t because of mandatory minimums….

I think Vick is a dumb ass. “I’m gonna do something illegal that most everyone in this country absolutely hates. That’ll do well for my career!” The guy’s gone to prison and he’s now a joke for Jay Leno until Conan takes over The Tonight Show…

Dave Littlefield: he’s the head of an evil cult of Barry Bonds worshipping people who’s main job is to keep the Pirates down until after he retires so that the Pirates won’t do better than the Giants until then. He can then justify leaving Pittsburgh and stuff. Let me know if this makes no sense at all….

So earlier today I was chillin’ and playing some MVP Baseball on the Gamecube (Yeah, I should get a Wii or X-Box 360, but I don’t have the money for it). I decided to beat the record with the Rangers getting 30 runs in a game earlier this week. I got to 31 runs at Shea Stadium against the Mucking Fets.Anyways, my pitcher was just killin’. It was awesome. He got to the bottom of the 9th. 26 up, 26 down. Just one out away from a perfect game. It got to 2 balls and 2 strikes. The next pitch, the guy drove over the right field wall. Ahhh! I just lost a few thousand MVP points! Damn it. The next guy hit the next pitch to the shortstop who threw him out. Fuck. A perfect game for 8 and 2/3 innings and my Pirates guy pulled a Harvey Haddix. Put an asterisk next to it, I guess.

Yeah, I was pretty bummed out about it. The next game I had a 13-0 game against the Cubs. That made me feel a bit better. The Cubs are 3-12. The Pirates are 13-0. I’m gonna see how many games I can win in a row. I’ve been working on this since right after my surgery; so clearly I’m taking my time.

Well the Pirates won again tonight. That’s like 5 in a row. Yeah, the Pirates are teasing me, just like “god” teased Mosses in the desert. They want me to show up on Friday night just to watch them lose. It’s so tempting to go right now and yet, I know I shouldn’t. It’ll just be another horrible lose that will make me pissed off for the three hour drive home and the wedding the next day. Oh well. Food for thought.

I’m gonna watch some MST3K, drink some watter and go to bed….

Yuck. Ok, I don’t give a shit if you don’t like baseball. But if you’re gonna write an op-ed saying you don’t like baseball; get your facts right.He complains that the Yankees seem to win all the World Series. I guess he hasn’t payed any attention since 2000 or bothered to really look up the records. The Yankees haven’t played in a World Series since 2003 and haven’t won one since 2000. The fact is that so far this decade a different team has won the World Series every year and no team has repeated since 2000. Yankees won in 2000. Diamondbacks in 2001. Angels in 2002. Marlins in 2003. Red Sox in 2004. White Sox in 2005. Cardinals in 2006. So yeah.

Next he complains that five teams haven’t won a World Series. First of all, he’s off by three. Eight teams have never won a World Series. Five of those teams have never been in the World Series, maybe that’s what he meant. Two of them didn’t exist before 1993. He spends some time saying how great football is. But last I checked, the Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, Houston Texans, Tennesse Titans, San Diego Chargers, Detroit Lions, Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles, Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans Saints, Carolina Panthers, Arizona Cardinals and Seattle Seahawks have never won a Super Bowl. Why do any of those people in those 15 cities bother to show up for games if they haven’t won a Championship? Well, I guess Viking fans don’t show up, they sell their season tickets to Steelers fans.

And the Yankees? From 1923 to 1962; they won 20 World Series. That’s 20 in 40 seasons. Since then? it’s been 44 seasons and they’ve won 6. Not exactly winning every year. Maybe in 1963, you’d have a good point. But now a days, that complaint is kinda old.

He complains they don’t talk about stats he wants to hear about. Yeah, welcome to the club. They don’t spend much time talk about OBP and OPS or EqA or WHIP or VORP. Sometimes they do bring up strike outs, if the guy is a big slugger who strikes out a lot. Batting average is probably the most universally recognized number that informs the viewer of the ability of the hitter. Same with the pitcher’s ERA. That’s why they’re brought up. They’re not the most reliable stats in baseball, but most viewers know what they mean.

Finally, he complains that most players are named Rodriguez. Clearly he lives in NYC because there are, last I checked, two stars named Rodriguez. Alex and Ivan. I guess he never heard of Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez, Curt Shilling, Derek Jeter, Pedro Martinez, Derek Lee, Ken Griffey Jr, Roger Clemens, Barry Zito, Jason Bay, Mariano Rivera, David Ortiz and Prince Fielder. It’s like saying 10 years ago there were too many NFL stars named Sanders.

Oh well, I wrote way too much on such a pointless topic. later, man…

Holy shit. It’s just raining too much. Everything down by the barn has become a big muddy mess. There are just mud holes every where around here. If it stopped raining now, we couldn’t get back to work on the hay until Saturday, at least. We were supposed to be finished a week ago if it didn’t rain so god damn much. In other happy news, the free stalls are all finished. It’s freaking cool! So far the cows are kinda scared of them. I mean, it’s new and different and weird; so yeah the cows don’t like it much. But I can imagine once some of the cow shit splatters around and get rid of the new look; the cows will enjoy it more than the old ones. I hope they will, we spent enough fucking time on it and such….Some more thoughts and stuff: the Pirates bats have finally woken up. I’m reconsidering the non-trip to Milwaukee. But I’d say right now it’s still a really small chance of going. The Pirates would have to win every game between today and next Friday. Otherwise, I can watch it on TV for free! And it’s likely I’ll get the cheap non-bleacher seats. The $13 way up there in the middle of no where seats. I think I’m gonna settle for sitting in the comfy chair while watching the game with a brat and beer that’s way cheaper and more comfortable and not dealing with driving home pissed off the Pirates just lost again. Wait until next year, I guess…

Today, I decided to accomplish somethings. First, was the credit report check. I hadn’t checked it out since March 22, 2006; so it was that time again. Turns out that one negative item was removed (Yah!) and there’s now five accounts in good standing; most of which are closed. In fact, there’s only two of the eight accounts still open. So I decided to print the whole dern thing out. I printed one page and I couldn’t read any of it. I guess after a few months of holding off the whole “replace empty cartridge thing” the computer has been bugging me about, it was actually time to get new ink cartridges.So I went and ate lunch; during lunch dad bugged me about going to Theisen’s and getting some stuff for him. I took the two old cartridges and turned them in at Staples. They took $6 off and I got two new cartridges there. So yeah. I’m not sure Staples is the best place to get new cartridges. In fact, it was more for them than it was for the printer when I bought it new. It doesn’t make any sense. Except maybe, they make their money on the ink and not the printers.

So, I went to Theisen’s. There I found out again that they still didn’t have my name in the farm’s charge account there. Ugh, we went through this shit last year and we told them then that they should just put my name in there. Now we had to do it all over again…

So yeah. Something funny I read in the USA Weekend thing in the paper. It had three tips to increase your credit rating. 1. Ask a main card holder to become a joint card member on their card. 2. Get a big name credit card. 3. Get a gas card. So basically, their big way to get financially better (I guess) is to accumulate more debt. Un-fucking-believable. Here’s three ways to really become financially better off: 1. Pay off your credit cards/loans/debts, etc. 2. Cancel your credit cards. 3. Pay cash or use your debit/check card for stuff instead of credit; you’ll save money that way. I bet there were a few credit card CEO’s who were happy about that stupid advice column. And there’ll be a few suckers who do what the column said to do….

Well the news is in about the draft and it’s bad news for the Pirates, of course. Matt Wieters signed with the Orioles for $6 million. The Pirates got their rather crummy pitcher signed for $2.75 million. For an extra $3.25 million they could have had Wieters (if the Pirates can negotiate at all, which they might not had been able to with super agent Scott Boras). Clearly, the Pirates are just a poor team that can’t afford someone like Wieters. We have to be happy with trading Rajai Davis for aging a$$hole Matt Morris and his $13 million contract. Clearly, the Pirates scouting and player development guys, along with GM Dave Littlefield need to have their balls surgically re-attached. Or they should just be fired and replaced by people who know what the fuck they’re doing. I now believe that they didn’t actually ask for the money to sign Wieters, they just decided that Moskos would be cheaper and there’d be less of a “risk” with him. Fucking lame. It sucks. Steelers and the Penguins are located in the same exact city, yet they can make smart draft choices. They can have excellent coaches and make logical and useful trades. Sure, the Steelers are probably the most popular team in the NFL, so they have a lot more money than the Pirates. But the Penguins are not as popular as the Steelers. Yet they took Sidney Crosby and they have a pretty good history in the draft. Yet the Pirates keep fucking up at their usual spot in the top 10 draft picks…I’m also a bit worried that Littlefield only offered to take up Matt Morris’ entire contract just to keep the Pirates down. Knowing that his job in Pittsburgh is just about over, he could have just decided that if he’s going down, he’s gonna take the Pirates with him, for a little while at least.

In other news, I just turned on Letterman and he had this great Apple Computer commercial parody. The Mac says he can download music from iTunes for 99 cents. The PC then says that he downloads his music from file sharing sites and doesn’t pay a nickle. Mac says that yeah, he knows and that’s why he has to wave over some cops to drag him away. As the PC is being dragged away, the Mac says “Say hi to OJ.” Freaking awesome!

Geez, this year is just slowly going by at a real turtle like pace. I just keep wanting it to be September. Here it is, about 12 days in to August and I’m sick of it already. Mostly, the Pirates suck and regular season NFL football is still a month away. It’s hard to get all pumped up about meaningless games in August. The first game, sure. The rest of the preseason schedule? Not really.

So tonight I went and partied like it’s 1985. My uncle had his 60th birthday party and so I got there a bit late and ate food, showed off the picture of me with the five Lombardi trophies and generally did very little. It was an uneventful party until my iPod died on me while showing the pictures to Byron. I’ll have to wait until next time I see him for the rest of the pictures. I’ll be sure that the next family thing I’ll have my iPod fully charged. A few of my cousins asked me if my mom dresses my dad. My dad was wearing a pink shirt and some tan pants. It was still funny. I didn’t think of it because both of my parents are pretty independent about what they wear. I mean, my dad wears what he likes. If he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t wear it. My mom buys his clothes, but if he doesn’t like it she returns it. He’s not a 90 year old guy who can’t dress himself. He’s probably comfortable. Personally, I thought he over dressed for a birthday party. I wore my “Vader Was Framed” t-shirt and some blue jeans.

But I do think with my parents there is some programming going on there on my mom’s part. I heard stories of my dad showing up for a date with my mom with a flannel shirt and a stocking cap while riding a motorcycle. Flannel shirts while going out some place nice; never done anymore. He wears nice shirts and slacks. Motorcycle? Not in years. It’s all minivan with occasionally my mom letting my dad drive her in the Chevelle SS.

I suppose I could be programmed too. I’ve gone on a few first dates with girls while wearing my “You know you want me, Baby” Crow T. Robot shirt. I wore my Pirates hat once. I have all my Steelers and Pirates shirts. I got two Darth Vader shirts and a few dress shirts just in case. I have a tie, somewhere in there. Overall, my wardrobe is less than inspiring. I suppose if I meet the right girl; she’d probably go through my clothes and make some choices for me there. Slowly forcing me to wear what she likes and telling people that I like wearing it. I think that’s what marriage is like. I dunno for sure. All I know is that right now, I like my clothes because they’re so me.

So time for some links…er just one: The Maps of places I’ve been. Whoo! It’s fun!

Time for some Rowsdower!