FoolBlog

Assaulting soldiers on the Metro could be hazardous to your health

Checking one of my 15 or so e-mail accounts today, I got an "official notice" warning military personnel to watch themselves on the Metro, because scary nasty anti-war protestors are supposedly giving them crap.

Recently, there have been local incidents in which military personnel have been verbally assaulted while commuting on the Metro. Uniformed members have been approached by individuals expressing themselves as anti-government, shouting anti-war sentiments, and using racial slurs against minorities.

My bullshit detector immediately went off at high volume. I take the Metro a couple times a week these days, and uniformed personnel are everywhere. I'd think a war protestor deciding to give grief to a uniformed soldier would quickly find himself outnumbered, both by other servicemembers and sympathetic civilians, myself included. Sure enough, a little googling shows that the memo is mostly crap. (That's right, I just linked to Pajamas Media! NFW!)

Which makes one wonder what exactly the point of the memo is. Was there one isolated incident, and someone higher-up decided they needed to issue a warning? Or is it a shameless attempt to demonize anyone who's against the war? Because of course the usual suspects at LGF and their ilk are chortling that this is representative of all liberals, and we should all be shot, or at least punched in the face.

What I cooked this weekend

A summer holiday weekend is normally a three-day binge of grilling at Chateau del Vaca. However, Saturday night I took Mrs. Fool to dinner at Maggiano's with friends, and we had so much leftover food that we had it for dinner again on Sunday. So much of my grilling plans were shelved.

I got back to it yesterday, however. Normally my method for ribs is rather predictable: coat them in a spice rub, roast in a low oven for two hours, then finish them on the grill with a slathering of sauce. But I found an unorthodox recipe in the May 2001 "Paris" issue of Bon Appetit: they were marinated overnight in lemongrass, ginger, fish sauce, and a few other items, then went straight on the grill for 25 minutes. (Apologies, the recipe isn't on Epicurious for whatever reason.) They smelled like the inside of a Vietnamese restaurant coming off the grill. Even the girls liked them. Served with boiled new potatoes with butter and chives, and sauteed zucchini.

Linking Fool Friday

Why doesn't the McCain campaign work closer with the grassroots conservative blogs? The Poor Man explains.

History lesson: The wars of our time, re-enacted by food.

Sports: I love a well-pitched complete game. Too bad they're going extinct.

Music: The title says it all, hip hop is no longer cooler than me.

Why are you still here, anyway? Go home and enjoy the weekend. Don't expect Swedish food on Monday.

Mid-Week Cookie Break

Yeah, it's a day late. What do you want for nothing?

Swedish Food Monday

My commenters are weird

Have a look, if you don't mind, at the comments on this baseball post. Someone posted a long and somewhat crazed manifesto that is not at all about the Nats and Pirates. It's not obviously spam, and I can't find repeated instances of it via Google, so I was going to let it stand, even though it, you know, has nothing to do with what I wrote.

The only identifier is an e-mail address that ends in freewill.com... which, as it turns out, is a splog for writing your last will and testament.

So, what the hell? Keep it or dump it?

Linking Fool Friday

Another edition of "What Digby Said": Leave it to Der Spiegel to note how vapid our political coverage is. Also, voter suppression is crap.

Wind Can Supply 20% of U.S. Electricity! But, you know, that's less than 100%, and wind farms are ugly, so to hell with it! Also, Al Gore drove a car this one time, so global warming is a crock!

Sports: Joe Posnanski is still awesome.

Wackiness ensues: Achewood fans will dig this. Others won't understand, but they can enjoy this freaky yet cool graffiti-based animation.

Mid-Week Cookie Break

That Guy Smiley fellow is a tad high-strung.

Swedish Food Monday

Dude. Suite.

Friday night I got to see the Nats take a beating from the Fish, mostly from my friend Don's seats in section 135. Interesting to take in the ballpark from a different point of view.

But on the Metro platform in Vienna, I had run into a longtime co-worker and softball teammate, who was headed to the game with a ticket to a suite. He offered to try to get us up there, and sure enough in the bottom of the 7th my phone rang. Before long, we were here:

It was kind of cool, especially snagging a free beer (they had already taken the food away by this time), but at the risk of sounding too proletarian, I wouldn't enjoy being in a suite all the time. As Pat said, "It's not like being at the game, it's like you're in someone's living room with the game on in the background." Even if you go sit out in the seats, you're in this boxed-in area, and you feel little to no connection to the crowd as a whole. Seriously, I like high-fiving total strangers after a game-winning home run. I also don't get people who hang out at the bars on the club level the whole game. If I want to hang out at a bar, I'll do that; I don't need to pay some $50 a stub to get in the ballpark, then hang out at the bar.

But we've already established that I'm just a baseball nerd, haven't we. Random bits after the jump.

Still working out the kinks of stadium operations: For a brief moment at the start of the game, the scoreboard claimed the Marlins had swapped their entire starting lineup for that of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

This is easy for me to say, never having been a major league pitcher. But how the hell can you walk the opposing pitcher when he's hitting all of .100? Just pump fastballs over the heart of the plate, and if he gets a hit, well more power to him. Redding walked Nolasco with two out in the 5th, and while it didn't cost him that inning, those extra pitches take their toll, and sure enough the wheels fell off in the 6th.

Tonight's minor league ballpark stunt: push-up contest! Two random dudes on top of the dugout doing pushups! Whee! Leave that crap for the Carolina League. Please.

Lastly, let's play my favorite mid-season game: Pick the All-Star representative from a crappy team! Jon Rauch wouldn't be too terrible a pick, and if Lannan can keep up the good starts he might get himself there. But I'll be damned if there's a position player who's deserving. (Don't say "Guzman," OK?)

Linking Fool Friday

You know how in the bridge of the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" they go "WWWWAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!" I've felt like that pretty much all day. And yet, I still bring you, my six readers, your Friday links.

One of the biggest items making the rounds of the blogosphere this week is Matt Tabibi's incredible Jesus Made Me Puke. Unbelievable stuff, but it goes a long way towards explaining why so many Americans seemingly vote against their better interests and otherwise do illogical things. So much easier to have someone else tell you what to think. "In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of philosophy!"

Another piece deservedly getting a lot of attention: D. Aristophanes' plea to Clinton supporters to explain themselves. If anyone knows of a well-thought-out reply to this post, please advise, because I'd sure like to see it.

Mascot news: Mr. Redlegs, decapitated! You realize the Reds have three mascots? I like mascots as much as the next guy--in fact, quite a bit more than the next guy--but that just seems excessive. For the trip to Cinci in July, I am debating whether to pursue all three, or just decide which is my favorite and only get one picture.

Baseball items: Reason No. 38,374,749 that Joe Posnanski is awesome. And behold, our Nats receive national media attention--from the Onion.

Lastly, here are two additions to the blogroll: One is Bobby Isosceles, who loyal readers were introduced to in this post. And as I used to say, back in the day, as we went into a guitar solo, "Take it to the bridge." No, that's not it... I mean, "Here's Joel."

Mid-Week Cookie Break

HELLO FROG.

Swedish Food Monday

Linking Fool Friday

I'm not impugning your patriotism, I'm just saying you hate America!

Think what you will of Jeremiah Wright, but the guy certainly doesn't take any crap.

Slacktivist notes the weird tendency of banks and their ilk to put the onus of preventing identity theft back on the victims, when by and large they should have better controls themselves.

E.coli conservatism item of the week: affordable food or safe food, pick one.

Corn as fuel vs. food is driving up food prices, but the problem isn't demand per se, it's some people's inability to pay and the fact that the people who can pay just don't care if those people are hungry. Hey, where's our switchgrass fuel, anyway?

Via Ezra Klein, good post on our national unused cognitive surplus and what could be done with it if we tried just a little harder.

Lastly: I have no idea what his platform is, but I can't help but think Bolivia's president is somewhat awesome.

Random thoughts: Nats-Pirates

Short game. Something like two hours ten minutes. Good pitching or poor hitting? Some of the former, most of the latter. My fellow attendees restored a bit of my faith in humanity by not streaming to the exits starting in the seventh inning; by and large, people seemed to realize that time-wise it wasn't that late yet.

I've been to four games this season, and Odalis Perez started three of them. That doesn't sound like much fun off-hand, but at least he gives the team a halfway decent chance to win every night. I could be going to, say, Matt Chico's starts instead.

Dear Nats management: Please knock it off with the "sing-off" between innings. It's minor-league. Shitcan "Nuts About the Nats" while you're at it.

Agree with Needham's take on Boswell's latest fawning column. I don't much agree with the notion that the Nats are offering $5 and $10 tickets simply because they're generous and kind. They do that because they need that price point to sell more seats. If they could sell every seat for $50 and sell out the park nightly, guess how much they would charge?

Fish tacos = tasty good, but $10 seems a bit steep.

Most importantly: Dmitri Young now stands beside George Washington on my office bobblehead shelf.