FoolBlog

Linking Fool Friday

Teh political: Read this to get depressed about your fellow Americans. And Support Our Troops, Bitches! While we're supporting our troops, our government is paying Pakistan to not help find Osama bin Laden. Also, our press is dumb.

Related to other parts of the bigfool.com empire: Mediocre Fred gets to be a mascot for a day. And Philadelphia Magazine John Kruk.

Other sports: a nice story about a uniform number.

And teh wacky: LOLCats.

Mid-Week Cookie Break

Linking Fool Friday

Everyone sing Happy Birthday to the Little Fool. And to Mrs. Fool, whose birthday will forever be overshadowed by having her daughter's fall one day before, but who nonetheless deserves all the well-wishes and gifts we can heap upon her.

Yay American productivity! Boo American vacation policy! Cheap-labor capitalism at its best.

Ye gods but it's too easy to manipulate the stock market.

Teh sports: I greatly prefer wooden bats to aluminum; if there was a wooden-bat softball league around here, I'd gleefully play with it. But NYC's ban on aluminum bats has had unintended consquences, namely city schools ditching their baseball teams. Time for MLB and/or Louisville Slugger to step up.

Teh wacky: Magical Trevor has probably been around for a while, but I just saw it this week, so whatever. Thanks to Hodge for passing along chicken-flavored bubbles.

Mid-Week Cookie Break

"Me no feel pain."

Sweep!

Liz approves of the cotton candy at RFK.

Like Basil says, it's a long season. One week your favorite team looks like ass, losing eight in a row, then they turn around and sweep a weekend series. This put a stop to my fear that the Nats would lose every game I attend in person this season. Still, this was one of those games where a lot of things broke the right way, and the fundamental flaws of the team were still on display.

The Nats' five-run outburst in the second was a collection of singles, an error, a force out, and the Guzman triple that could have been a single if Borchard hadn't tried to make a heroic diving catch. Then in the sixth we were treated to some miserable fielding: Church lost a fly ball in the sun, and Fick just flat-out botched a foul pop-up, looking EXACTLY like me botching a foul pop-up at third base in a softball game a copule weeks ago. Fortunately this was the only bad inning a decent start by Simontacchi, and Colome was able to stop the bleeding before coughing up the lead.

Speaking of lousy fielding, Zimmerman made a wacky play in the second that fortunately didn't cost us anything. With runners on first and second and two out, the opposing pitcher hit a grounder down to third. Zimmerman scooped and flipped to second for the force... except that Lopez was entirely not expecting Zimmerman to throw there and was thus nowhere near the bag. Fortunately, he was at least in line for the throw, and when he realized what was happening, he made a nice pseudo-double play turn and threw to first for the out.

I missed Rauch's save, as we were standing in line to run the bases. They had the Presidents on the field for the Diamond Dash, which thoroughly freaked out the Little Fool, but I made her run anyway. We didn't wait for half an hour just to turn back because she was scared of George Washington's freakishly large head. Reflections Photo has gotten much better at protecting their images, so if you want to see pictures from yesterday, go here and look in the last couple rows for me in my grungy old Montreal jersey. (Something odd: I got this URL for the best single shot of me and Liz, and when I changed the image ID by one thinking it would be the next picture in the sequence, I got this.)

Linking Fool Friday

Last week's was short. This week's is not.

Teh political: Digby notes the double standard when it comes to proposed laws to "protect" young women from their own bad judgment, while young men apparently need no such protection.

Hey look, the law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism works!

Dear House Democrats: Please restore habeas corpus. We elected you precisely to fix stuff like this. Thanks.

Teh food: DC-area cooks rejoice, your spices are here!

Teh sports: I don't know what they're playing in the World League, but they have some cool logos, and I'm seriously tempted to buy an interest in the Ulan Bataar Yak Attack. I still don't like God Bless America, and I'm glad I'm not the only one. And at least the Nats are tops in baseball in some positive capacity.

Aaaaaaand teh wacky and miscellaneous: Highly entertaining article on Bob Barker's impending retirement. When I was a kid, The Price is Right was the best thing about being home sick from school.

Ridiculous note from a college student. Exploring the storm drains of Vegas (thanks Tor). And lastly, otters holding hands.

I love the freakin' Internet, part 768

In an effort to avoid work, I was running down an "MP3 wish list" I'd made some time ago, but hadn't reviewed in a while. Sample entry: I'd been told Biz Markie covered Elton John's "Bennie and the Jets." Gotta be out there somewhere, right? Hells yes! A little Googling not only uncovered the MP3, but video:

And in keeping with this blog's recent trend of nearly every post having a Muppet video...

Now if anyone can find me an MP3 of Guided By Voices covering REM's "Seven Chinese Brothers," I'd be eternally grateful. And if you can find video of GBV doing that song with Muppets...dang, I'd have to give you my car or something.

Oh boy a poker post!

I haven't been playing much lately, what with softball season starting and all, but last night I made it to the bar poker game and placed an improbable 7th out of 64-or-so players. Improbable because I survived a number of ridiculous all-ins, specifically:

• Down to 1700 in chips and on the big blind at 1000, I decided I was going all-in with any two cards. Those two cards turned out to be 5-6 unsuited. I had two callers, and ended up with an 8-high straight.


• The very next hand, I got A-Q, raised, then got put all-in by one player. It held up.


• Short-stacked and on the small blind, it folded around to me and I called with pocket 2s. I called, and not surprisingly the big blind (a big stack) put me all in. He turned over 8-9 suited, and got a 10 and a 7 on the flop. But the dueces held up.


• Down to nine players (the final table takes eight), I was again short-stacked and had just enough to post the big blind. I had one caller, who turned over pocket queens; I had A-4, and caught an ace on the river.

Free poker is a silly, silly game.

Mid-Week Cookie Break

Actually, it's Cookie Monster's toothy green cousin. Props to Tor.

Linking Fool Friday

I don't have a whole lot this week. The Politico: EIGHT stories on John Edwards' hair?

GYWO: Sadly, yes, all too believable

Reprezentin' NoVA/DC: Save Eastern Market!

Ehhhh... that's about it. Anyone got something for Teh Wacky? Put it in comments.

Mid-Week Cookie Break

Far A-Way!

I was downtown on Monday, and wandered over to the new ballpark site, where I took these crappy cell-phone pictures. The red arrow shows approximately where I expect my seats to be next year.

Seriously, count me as one of the few who is NOT looking forward to the new park. Watch the virtual tour and tell me what's in the approximate location of my current seats. That's right, a shit-load of luxury suites! And then some kinda press box up on the top! There's a narrow band of about eight rows of "regular" seats in the upper deck right behind home plate. I'll consider myself lucky if I end up there, but I'm quite sure it'll be farther away from the field than I am now. And more expensive.

Four Years Later

Mission Accomplished, bitches!