FoolBlog

Linking Fool Friday

Flashback: Howard Dean saw the future of Iraq. Too bad he was completely insane, right?

Everyone is linking to Billmon's recent entry on Israel's "they're all the enemy" stance, and so will I. The whole make Hezbollah into a pariah within Lebanon strategy doesn't seem to be working too well. The idea that you're not allowed to kill civilians is so easily cast aside these days, I'd be shocked if I had any shockability left in me.

In that vein, I was going to link to Anthony Bourdain's WaPo chat on watching bombs hit Beirut from his hotel balcony, but now he has a longer such narrative on Salon.

I quite enjoyed Jon Katz's piece on his hard-working sheep dog. Linked therein is an equally good, older piece about donkeys.

Booooo-onds

In the grand FoolBlog tradition of linking to people who write what we're thinking far better than we can, and thus save us all that typing, please read Capitol Punishment's summary of last night's game.

Actually, I do have some comments. First, Bonds was, as expected, booed loud and long. Personally, I'm kind of over it. Yeah, I think he's a cheater, but I'm not for purging his records or accomplishments; we all know what's gone down, and we'll all remember him with that in mind. I still think he should be in the Hall of Fame; I still think he should have been the MVP of the 2002 World Series. But he'll always have an asterisk, whether it's formally in the book or just in our heads.

We got there right at game time, so I didn't really get to take in the supposed improvements. I enjoyed the Presidents' Race, which I had thought from day one should be Sausage Race-costumed style rather than animated. However, my biggest complaint about life in the upper deck has remained unaddressed: there's no good beer up there. I don't want a Bud Lite, and I don't want to schlep down to the 300s to get a beer that actually tastes good. Gotta e-mail the Lerners about that one.

Catiecookies!

It's my birthday, y'all! I am cuter than YOU!

Time to rock out

Two good tunes found on a recent KEXP podcast:
Paper Kites, "Glove Box"
The Lonely Forest, "Now On to Other News"

From what KEXP says, these are high school kids. Jeez, my college band was all about sounding like Murphy's Law and writing lyrics about drinking beer, nothing nearly as polished as these two. There's hope for the future yet.

Linking Fool Friday (Monday Edition)

I assure you, you don't want to know what I was doing on Friday.

Another depressing week. Is the Israel-Lebanon conflict the harbinger of collapse for the US as global power? Whatever it is, it completely sucks, and it's definitely hard to have a reasonable discussion about. Frankly, I want nothing to do with it.

Dr. James Dobson had a rough childhood, and now he wants everyone else to be equally miserable.

Corporate outrage o' the week: Stocks dropped on September 11; a nice show of confidence would have been for the captains of industry to step in with their own money and buy them up, right? Instead, our fine American corporations took the opportunity to grant stock options for no real reason at all.

If, like me, you live in the wacky-ass wilds of Northern Virginia, or a similar exurban enclave, you will recognize this post by Joe Bageant.

Lastly, a picture is worth a thousand words.

A note to bands with web sites, and their webmasters

It's great that so many of you are putting free, full-length MP3s out on the Web for the listening population to sample. But for cryin' out loud, would you please put a proper MP3 tag on the file? I grab MP3s via a number of blogs, and sometimes it can be weeks before I actually listen to a given song. It's extremely frustrating to say, "That's pretty good, but who the hell are they?" when I all I know is that the file name is "Track 01.mp3."

To that end, anybody know a band apparently with the intials TLW, with songs "Strawberries" and "Pindrop?" (Hang on, found it, it's The Light Wires, courtesy of ye Mobtowne Shank blogg.)

While I'm thinking music, two good podcasts: KEXP's Music that Matters, and Dave's Lounge.

Wild speculation with no evidence whatsoever

Has anybody actually seen Ken Lay's body?

Would it be terribly surprising if his death was faked, and he's living on a Caribbean island somewhere? Not like he didn't have the money to make it happen.

Linking Fool Friday (Thursday edition)

Gonna be AFC all day tomorrow. Quickly now:

Two Glenn Greenwald posts on the well-known civility and intellectual consistency of right-wing bloggers.

Ezra Klein on the myths of malpractice.

Yglesias on WILLPOWER as the defining requirement of international relations.

Lastly, can't tell the difference between the Onion and real news.

We have a challenger!

I am pleased to learn that Judy Feder is stepping up to challenge Frank Wolf for his House seat here in our crazy Virginia district. I was concerned that the lack of a House Dem primary vote meant no challenger.

Ms. Feder is apparently going to center her campaign on energy issues. May I also suggest harping on Iraq (#220 and 608), support for veterans (ibid, 221 and 224), and the bankruptcy bill, a vote that conveniently doesn't appear in Rep. Wolf's own voting summary. Also, Wolf did not vote on the Terri Schiavo bill, which in my opinion is as good as voting for it. I have no doubt there's plenty more cannon fodder out there.

Bad baseball fan! BAD!

Softball game Monday night. Missed the home run derby entirely. Got to bed just before 1.

The baby woke up at 4:30. Big sister woke up at 6.

Softball game last night. Hot, humid. Tired. Knees want to fall off my body.

"Screw the All-Star game. I'm going to bed."

Happy No Baseball Day, the lamest day of the summer.

WAIT WAIT THERE'S MORE: Behold TBogg's review of the 1965 NL all-star team. I usually think it's difficult to compare eras; I bristle a little when someone says the game ain't what it used to be. But: dag, yo.

Linking Fool Friday

Kind of a downer week. The whole New York Times treason thing is just so stupid as to be depressing. I can't believe we're seriously having these conversations.

Slacktivist on the curious standards of discussions of consumer debt. "The credit-card banks have deluded themselves (and their shareholders, and their puppets in Congress) that it's somehow possible to reap the rewards of usury without accepting any of the inherent risk." Indeed, and yet not nearly enough of us find this unusual or unacceptable.

Orcinus on a good response to a neo-Nazi rally. I like it, and I agree with David that the "just ignore them" strategy doesn't seem to accomplish much. In Olympia, they found a way to actively tell the neo-Nazis that their message was unwanted, without leading to violence.

Digby on the false dichotomies presented by Republicans with regards to the war on terror. And just posted, the unfortunate direction all this tough-ass rhetoric is taking us.

Isn't there anything fun this week? Sure: video of 45,000 bottle rockets going off. If you think you've essentially seen it all after about a minute... keep watching.

Coaching Visit to Mound

[Top of the 9th inning, tie game. After committing a three-base throwing error on a bunt back to the mound, BRAY retires two batters and intentionally walks the next, showing jitters on the throws home. FRANK emerges from the dugout and walks to the mound. CORDERO starts out from the bullpen, but FRANK waves for him to go back.]

FRANK: Son, ordinarly St. Claire would come out here and tell you how to pitch to this guy, to throw strikes and keep your arm slot consistent, all that pitching crap. But I have sat through too much of this game to take that pansy-ass approach. So I came out here myself to tell you that if you do not retire this batter, I will kill you. I will rip your head from your shoulders with my own bare hands. You think I can't? You think I'm an old man? I have 586 career home runs. I'm still strong. I'll rip off your head and have Bowden send your corpse down to low-A ball. Am I making myself understood? [BRAY nods.] Good. Get this guy out.

[FRANK returns to the dugout. BRAY looks a bit shaken, but gathers himself to pitch to the pinch-hitter BORCHARD. He gets a swinging strike and two foul balls, the second one being a pretty good pitch to hit that BORCHARD just misses. The catcher, SCHNEIDER, calls time and approaches the mound.]

SCHNEIDER: Dude. I dunno, maybe you thought Frank was just running his mouth. But he's not kidding. You remember TJ Tucker?

BRAY: Um, I think so...

SCHNEIDER: Frank killed him. They air-freighted his body to the Gulf Coast League. So c'mon, bro. Keep the ball down.

[SCHNEIDER returns to the plate. BRAY gets BORCHARD to fly to right.]

At least, that's how it appeared to go down from where I was sitting.

Zimmerman HAD to win this game in the 11th, because Stanton was warming up in the pen. If it had gone to 12, the Marlins win by 4 or 5 runs.

Random observations after the jump.

• Finally ate at the Red Hot & Blue stand. OK, not great, but certainly better than anything available on the upper level. Nice that you can sit there and eat and still see the game, too. Not the line I was expecting--but then, while the announced paid attendance was 29K, the crowd wasn't anywhere close to that.


• We enjoyed the Nats' 5-run 1st while scarfing pulled pork, and everything seemed to be going well, but then Livan couldn't get out of the second, coughing up seven runs. But take note: Zimmerman was hit on the hand in the first; he was lucky he didn't break anything. Livan obviously should have hit Cabrera leading off the second. His crappy performance was revenge by the baseball gods for not sticking up for his young start teammate. Speaking of which, I'd like to start a campaign for "HIT PEDRO" signs the next time the Mets come to RFK. Inquire within.


• When we got up to 515, I noticed the guy in front of me was keeping score on a scoresheet that looked exactly like the one I used, that I got from Chris at Capitol Punishment. So I had to ask, and yes it was Mr. Needham himself. Go figure.


• With the thin crowd, we took the opportunity to sneak downstairs, ending up in section 219, about fifteen rows behind the Nats' dugout. For the money, I like my seats in 515, but being up close is quite entertaining.


• All Friends of the Big Fool who expressed enthusiasm about going to games this season, then turned me down every time I actually offered you tickets: I have exactly one remaining game for which I have an unaccounted ticket. August 10 against the Fish. Think about it.

Lamest thing ever. In the history of the world--no, the universe. I'm serious.

Seen at RFK yesterday: a Nats road jersey with the number 24, and the nameplate "JACK BAUER."

Can we expel him from the fan base? Please?

He probably thinks torturing terror suspects is effective, too.

w00t

Posting from my PDA, with my new WiFi card.

That is all.

that's better

Suffice to say Sunday's game was much more enjoyable than Friday's. Props to Ortiz and Zimmerman. The Devil Rays looked like the Devil Rays, making four errors.

Not much comment, aside from just about the worst fielding play I've ever seen. Two outs, Anderson on third and Ortiz on second; the D-Rays' Jon Switzer uncorked a wild pitch. Catcher Dioner Navarro jumped out of the box to his left, scooped the ball in his glove, and in one motion blindly flipped it toward the plate, not turning around to actually look where he was throwing. Zing! Over the pitcher's head and rolling toward the first-base dugout, and Ortiz was able to score as well. Looked like one of my softball games out there.

Alberta!

Yesterday was one of those (some would say rare) days when you're glad you live in the DC area. I worked downtown, and around 3 the big boss came around and told everyone to go home. I was meeting Don at 5 for pre-game dinner, so I had some time to kill. I got a co-worker to drop me off at the Mall; I figured I'd pick some museum or other and wander around for a while. But I was pleasantly surprised to find it was the first day of the Folklife Festival. So I heard some live music, saw horsies and cattle, and stood next to the biggest friggin' dump truck you've ever seen. At the appointed hour I headed back to Eastern Market for tasty Cuban food, and I was quite pleased with my city.

But then came one of the negatives of living here: Our baseball team is the Nationals, who stink on ice right now. The Devil Rays' leadoff hitter came around to score, and that kind of set the tone for what was to come. Two-run homer in the third. Another in the fifth. Two more in the sixth. A solo homer and an RBI single in the 7th. Home crowd booing. Zimmerman finally got a run home for the Nats in the 8th (bases-loaded infield single, whoo!), but the stupid Presidents Race got a louder cheer.

Admittedly, the D-Rays are better than they used to be, but still: Good teams do not lose 11-1 to the Devil Rays.

But then, as I wrote the first draft of this post, Nick Johnson hit a home run to win Saturday night's game. There's always tomorrow in baseball. Ineed, I'll be there tomorrow--yes, of all the series to attend more than one game, I picked the Devil Rays.