Carnival of Madness

I can’t believe it, but my first Pirates game in almost a year is just a week away. In spite of floods and not getting anything planted in time and being several weeks behind on the farm and everything else, this summer is just cruising by. Fourth of July this week, meaning we must take dead cow, turn it in the patties and put the resultant cooked food in between bread for the experience of eating hamburgers. And fry up some french fries. Yum! And do this at Sean’s place. I’ll also partake in beer drinking. Sean and his knocked up wife won’t, so I’ll drink extra beer to make up for their lack of beer drinking.Anyways, Sunday is gonna be awesome next week. The first Milwaukee day game I’ll get to see. Generally, I wanted to go on Saturday night, but Jesse convinced me that Sunday afternoon would be better. Oh yeah, according Pat Lackey, owner, operator and dictator for life of the blog “Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?” the man known as Prince Fielder will hit a monster home run from Miller Park all the way to Allegheny River in Pittsburgh this Sunday. Ok, I’m just taking a mistake he made out of context, but I’m gonna have to see that. If they win, which they seem to do on Sundays at Miller a lot, I’ll be all excited and happy because it would be almost two years since I last saw them win. If they don’t, I’ll have to hope that they’ll win later in the month when I’m in Pittsburgh and if they don’t then, I’ll wait until late August when they’re in Milwaukee again and if they don’t then, I’ll be really pissed off.

Also the Chicago Bulls got Derrick Rose with the #1 overall pick. Hopefully, he’ll make the Chicago Bulls interesting to watch again. I have to say that getting the #1 overall pick was a real coup by the Bulls. I mean, they finished with the 9th worst record in the NBA and so they only had about a 1.7% chance of going #1. Which means the NBA would have to have about 100 more draft lotteries before the 9th worst team gets the first overall pick again. Haha to the team with the worst record (MIami Heat), which makes no sense ’cause they just won an NBA title a few years ago. Also glad that Major League Baseball and the NFL doesn’t bother with this draft lottery nonsense. The worst team should get the first pick. To me the NBA is kinda silly about it.

George Carlin died. Sorta ending the Tim Russert mourn-a-thon that started a few weeks ago and extended well beyond it’s necessary news period to almost two weeks. Anyways, Carlin was usually pretty awesome. I especially liked his take on the environment and his take on public health professionals. I loved how he pointed out that convicted murderers on death row will have their arms swabbed with alcohol before given lethal injection…to prevent germs… Also his football vs. baseball thing was good.

I guess it’s back to Babylon 5 now. I haven’t seen it in years so I thought I’d watch it again…

Typical government report. I guess that people will get so cranky over hot weather that they’ll just decide to become terrorist. It’s kind of a hot day here in Iowa, I think I saw a few people join terrorist groups this afternoon. I was gonna report them to Homeland Security but I forgot. Maybe it makes sense, I mean there are no terrorist from Northern Canada or Greenland, only where it’s hot out, like Iran and Saudia Arabia. Of course it really fits in with the Bush Administration of scare everyone over shit they just made up.

“Government, business and public efforts to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies to deal with climate change — from policies to reduce greenhouse gases to plans to reduce exposure to climate change or capitalize on potential impacts — may affect U.S. national security interests even more than the physical impacts of climate change itself,”

Huh? So we’re fucked if we do and fucked if we don’t. I mean, is that what they’re saying? Reads like it to me. I’m sure the Bushies love this report. They can support it by sounding “green” and scare people over terrorist at the same time. Reading the summary it just sounds like a bunch of..um….bullshit.

My cell phone has been weird all weekend. Specifically, I’m getting calls for people who are not me. I’ve been getting calls from some person in Muscatine (I’ve looked the number up on google and all the sites I go to say it’s from Muscatine) and text messages from that phone as well. Mostly at 2:00 in the morning. Ugh. I’m wondering if they’ll be calling tonight. I figured someone probably got a phone number and saved it wrong on their cell phone and keeps calling my phone by accident. They never leave a voice message so I have no idea what’s up with this person. This afternoon, I got another phone call from a different number that’s clearly not for me. Some angry sounding woman yelling at me to go home. When I asked “Who are you?” She replied that I know who it is. I replied “No I don’t, that’s why I asked.” She got even more angry and said that if I don’t come home today maybe I shouldn’t come home at all.If I get any more calls, I’ll just turn the fucking thing off and wait a few days or something. This is just annoying as hell.

So, Ebert and Roeper are both leaving their TV show At the Movies with Ebert and Roeper. I had a pretty good feeling that Ebert wouldn’t be coming back at all. He lost his voice and they’ve had no success at restoring it. But Roeper is kind of a surprise since he’s young and stuff. I just figured one day, Ebert would retire and cut ties with the show and Michael Philips would be named the permanent replacement host.I just thought it was kind stupid that they took out the “Thumbs Up” and “Thumps Down” thing. Instead, now they just have “See it” “Rent it” and “Skip it”; which isn’t all bad because there’s a third option. Instead of it just being good or bad, there’s average or not great, but not terrible…

I just saw one of the most disappointing loss by the Pirates so far this year. Basically the Pirates went in to the bottom of the ninth up 3-2. Maholm pitched a great 7 innings, Marte walked on a tight rope in the 8th but got out with no problem. Then the ninth came and Matt Capps went out to save the game. Well, he didn’t. David Ross got a double and then Griffey hit a homerun to end the game. At least Griffey is a hall of famer and not some nobody like Curtis Wilkerson. Ahh, take that 1991 St. Louis Cardinals! Haha, Curtis Wilkerson is the fucking man. But it still sucks. Fuck, I hate Jr. right now.Up tomorrow is the never dependable Zach Duke and then some minor leaguer who shouldn’t be in the majors replacing the regular pitchers who are injured on Wednesday night. I can’t imagine that the Reds won’t sweep the Pirates.

I’m gonna go watch that special with the Curtis Wilkerson home run…

I’m watching “Top Five Reasons You Can’t Blame…” and they’re talking about the Nike commercial Charles Barkley did back in the early 90′s where he said he’s not a role model and that he wasn’t paid to be one, he’s paid to be a basketball player and that parents should be role models. I mean, yeah, common sense. Parents are the biggest influence on their kids. I watched the NBA Finals when that ad was first shown and I didn’t think anything of it. I was 13 at the time and thought “Yeah, good basketball players should be role models. Not guys that suck like Barkley.” Of course I was a Bulls fan so I didn’t much like Barkley. But I can’t believe that any parents would complain about that ad. If I were a parent, I’d say he’s right and that I don’t need him fucking up the way I raise my kids. The only way Barkley would be a role model is if he had kids of his own. Then he would be a role model. Since 1993, I’ve learned that Barkley is way coool. He said Republcians lost their minds. I am so with him on that one…

I don’t get it. The floods here in Iowa are just as bad as anything that happened in New Orleans. To be specific, look at Cedar Rapids. Yet, where are the news reporters? Where is Shepard Smith complaining the government isn’t doing enough? Where is Geraldo rescuing people? Where the hell are the major news people? Where are the crazy people saying that Bush blew up the levees? Oh yeah, they’re probably back in New York, taking it easy. Sitting this one out. Why? I dunno. Probably because Iowans were smart enough to leave town when they called for evacuations. And the people “in charge” are doing the right thing to make sure that this isn’t a repeat of Katrina.Oh well, from what I understand the response from the non-flooded Dubuque has been great. Quick Stop gas stations wanted to fill up a semi of donations to send to people in the flood zones yesterday. They filled up five of them. Lots of people lucky enough to live in this city with a flood wall is doing their part to help people in CR and Iowa City. I’m so glad I don’t live in CR anymore. Of course the federal government is snapping in to action to help out. Which means they’ll be here in about 8 to 10 weeks. At this point the best thing they can do is stay the hell out of the way. We don’t need the Fuck-up Emergency Miss-management Agency around here.

Oh well, back to work. Ugh.

Whoa. Battlestar Galactica just threw a huge curveball to strike out the audience. Woulda been nice to have a hanging curve that would have been easy to take and knock out of the park. I mean, geez. What a huge let down, but not a bad episode or even a bad mid season cliff hanger. I guess it’s not what I wanted or expected. Now the likely year long wait until the final 10 episodes are finished and released. Fucking writers strike. If not for the strike, it’d likely be just a couple months until the final 10. I hope that they hurry it up and get it done with. SPOILERS: 
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So what the hell? They get to Earth finally and it’s a radioactive wasteland. Cities are destroyed and it looks like it’s going through Nuclear Winter, yep 4000 years after leaving Earth. Even makes me wonder what the point of the final five Cylons was. Maybe it was to make sure the humans find that there are no people on Earth and that they’ve just lead the people of the colonies to their doom. The rebel cylons were just around to make sure they get to Earth and that all the humans die. Even going further. The bad guy regular cylons were trying to save humanity. It seems though, in a very depressing way, that humanity is gonna die out. Earth was just a shitty pipe dream and now what? I mean with 10 episodes left, what the hell is gonna happen now? Who is the final cylon? Could it be Billy? That would be really messed up.Personally, I preferred Edward James Olmos’ idea for the end of the series and the discovery of Earth:

I personally — this is not from any of the writers, but my thing — I wanted to come into the present day, find Earth, cruise on top of it, see it for what it is, and as we’re coming down to it, we’re blown up, we’re nuked. And then someone says to the President of the United States, which is George W. Bush, “They’ve been taken care of. Thank God you saved the world again.” And you turn, and you see who told him that, and it’s one of the Cylons.

Or even better, land on Earth to find it as it is now. Just a group of humans who couldn’t possibly help defeat the cylons. We’re just all confused and skeptical about these people who show up and want to live on Earth, wants us to help stop these angry robots from killing all of us and tells us that we’re a colony of theirs.Yep, Earth sucks.

The really long time host of Meet the Press has died. I never liked or disliked him much. It was mostly indifference about the guy. Anyways, I can think of no better way to remember him than this funny bit from the Daily Show back in 2005 when he interviewed Condeleeza Rice:

Oh yeah.

I’m watching the Yankees-A’s game (Go A’s!). Man, it is just boring when there’s no Pirates games on at night. Thanks to the down right shitty Iowa weather, I was able to watch the Bucs beat up the Nats this afternoon. Last night’s game was much more entertaining because after Tuesday’s shitty game, where Matt Capps gave up the winning runs to the Nats and blew a save for the first time this season, he went back out and shut down the Nats in the top of the 9th last night. I have to say that the more I watch Capps, the more I like him. Unlike other Pirates relievers, he just goes out there and shuts down the other teams, most of the time. Today, for example, they put former first round pick Sean Burnett on the mound. He promptly gave up three runs. Until the Pirates added two more runs later on, I thought “Oh boy, here we go again…” Marte worried me a bit in the bottom of the 9th because it wasn’t Capps, but he ended it and all was well.I love YES Network (Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network), they keep having these commercials about the fact that 2008 will be the final year for Yankee Stadium. They seem to be bragging that the Yanks have been there for 85 years and yet all they’re gonna do is tear the stadium down. “Come see Yankee Stadium for the final time and see the great Yankee Stadium”

In flood news, let’s hear it for the city of Dubuque, IA. The absolute smartest thing the city government ever did was build a flood wall after the 1965 flood that basically destroyed downtown Dubuque. I mean the 1993 flood and this year’s flood has basically just been really annoying around here. Flooded basements and no open windows at night. I miss that a lot. I love having the windows open at night. If I leave the iBook (Mitchell) next to the window and if it rains in, I’d have to buy a new MacBook of some kind…somehow.

Anyways, that’s the entire last week or so…