oblong

Today is Friday so are you going Friday or Saturday? I've done the batting practice thing twice. It's fun. They'll give you the lecture on not to address the players or try to get their attention. Just stand and take pictures and all that. Let them work. It's not a junket. At some point you'll find them coming over to sign things or take pictures if they feel like it. If you are into that have something ready for them to sign. I had to quickly borrow a sharpie and I had Miggy sign my lanyard but we're supposed to give those back when you leave as they give you access to the field, luckily the guy let me keep mine. What was fun for me is watching the stats on the board as they hit showing the velocity and launch angle to try to predict what would be a HR. And just overall watching their process to prepare.

This is interesting and I believe most of it. Trying to correct their idiocy just plays into their goals. You can quibble over whether they really are that dumb that's beside the point. It appeals to their base. We've had idiotic reality TV for a generation now and it's been normalized. https://www.salon.com/2025/05/23/kristi-noems-proud-maga-bimbo-act-builds-on-the-legacy-of-sarah-palin/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKdX4dleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFPZnFkVGtzbjBac25uMG0wAR4fT_RsaqNf5yFOF3WEK_FW-7ljh5CmLXsgx22rTlQKYQCfJqj2mgJYhxpsZg_aem_nLQ7yI5WE3-TYwJp6zubmA

A friend and I had this conversation last night. who is the biggest/best artist that you know the least about? For me it was Springsteen and Jethro Tull. I know what they played on the radio, that's it. But i never dove in and listened on my own. I might do that now for Bruce.

Yes. This website exists because of that change made over 20 years ago. We were all on the official site and MWG ran it for them.

I think I have a phobia with hospitals. Whenever I have to go into one, to visit, I get very anxious. It could be sensory related with all the people and noises and activity. My wife works in one so she eats it all up. She will say "Oh, I gotta tell you, I had this patient today..." and I immediately stop her. If it involves any kind of bodily fluids or weird injuries I do not want to hear about it.

My wife loves it but I couldn’t get isn’t it. Medical shows in general do nothing for me. I get it. Here’s patient A with something. Oh wow. Here’s patient B with something else. Oh wow. Here’s patient C with another weird thing. Oh wow. Look how fast they talk. Wait. Someone may die. Or not. But hold on, now that other person is dying. Crap. Oh look. Big surprise, it turns out the STD was the fault of the girl. Not the man. This is stressful. but I know it’s my issue. I can’t deny the popularity. I’m just kind of squeamish and it all runs together.

waiting to see if my son is going to be part of the cuts. He gets SSI, Medicaid, and an additional supplement of like $85 a month explicitly for food. I'll admit to using it as fodder for maga family members so they can see who their cruelty affects and wait for them to say things like "well, that's not what it's about..." It makes all the difference in the world when the person affected is sitting in the room. They shut the **** up at that point. and if he is, he'll be fine obviously. But we had to explain to my mother in law that no, people like him don't get more money if they don't have family to help and live with. We were showing how the $1000 a month is a pittance when you factor in rent and food. She seemed to think he'd get more. Nope. That's the socialism your folks rail against. Your grandson.

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-855018 an active member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a far-left, Marxist, pro-Palestine group. Rodriguez has a BA in English from the University of Illinois, Chicago. He worked as an oral history researcher at The HistoryMakers Digital Archive and most recently as a profiles administration specialist at the American Osteopathic Information Association. Rodriguez made a political donation to the Joe Biden campaign in 2020. In 2017, Rodriguez attended a protest in honor of the anniversary of the death of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old boy who was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer. “The wealth that Amazon has brought to Seattle has not been shared with its Black residents,” Rodriguez told Liberation magazine at the time. The company’s “whitening of Seattle is structurally racist and a direct danger to all workers who live in that city,” he said. “So do we in Chicago and all across the country want a nation of cities dominated and occupied by massive corporations where only the rich and white can live and the vast majority of us must live on edges of the city and society living in deeper and deeper poverty?”

if one cares about internet comments many people in the arab/muslim community around me feel like this was a mossad operation. But I will play devils advocate and say that it's convenient to say that when someone on "your side" does something bad, we just write it off as a crazy person, but when someone on the "other side" does something bad, we say it's part of their idealogy. I'll go on record and say that I'm certain there's people in the leadership that are not upset over this other than how it reflects their own interests in getting aid and solutions. But dead Israelis? They don't care and they don't mourn.

Baseball is different. I'm not sure what it means to be marketed. They play every day. When the season is over they all go home to warmer climates. They come back in January for some media tours where they are led around to controlled environments, then go to Florida for a month and a half. They were lucky enough to have an off day for a Pistons home playoff game so they were marketed during that. But for the most part they are too busy to be seen around town doing stuff. You'll find handful of cases where someone's reading to kids in school or visiting a hospital. NFL players have all week after their practices to show up at events if need be. JV had Kate Upton to market though.

My wife wanted his jersey for mother's day so he's got that going for him.

When the guy was arrested he shouted Free Palestine. This will do wonders for the Gaza people. They will benefit greatly from the murder of these two people in the US.

The space nerd in me was geeking out big time during the last episode of Last of Us. Minor nitpick, the Apollo 15 capsule is in Dayton at the Wright Patterson museum. And it's kind of gutted as they reused some hardware. But the audio they used of the Apollo 11 launch was correct. That's the guy. Jack King is his name. Two ways to spot a legitimate countdown is if they say "Guidance is internal" at 15 seconds and "Ignition Sequence Start" right after he gets to 9 seconds.

This weather is going to suck this weekend. We're going tomorrow and we might a hat and need gloves! Screw that.

Damn it feels good to be a gangster

It wasn't that straight forward as Jackson for Scherzer. The Tigers also traded Granderson and Arizona ended up with Ian Kennedy as they also sent Scherzer to Detroit. We beat this topic to death back in the day as far as who was traded for who.... But regardless, Joyce was a fine player and any team would be happy with a draft that produced a player like that. Unless you have a top 3 pick, that's all you can reasonably hope for.

This is the series of text messages I got, in order, for our new kitchen cabinets. This began 15 minutes AFTER my wife sends me photos of them stored in our garage and dining room.

surprised at the 12:15 local start time in St. Louis.

All I will say is I heard the words “Matt Vier-line-g”.

Yes I do think so.

It's also the 32nd anniversary of the final episode. 84 million people watched. "Women, can't live with 'em...... pass the beer nuts" was one I use often

In a new hope Vader declares "There will be no one to stop us this time...." That's a reference to Cassian Andor now.

That I believe, especially since DD just a few days prior said Prince can't help them. Regarding Cabrera I think DD was just blowing smoke for the boss. The only question for Mike was whether he'd give him a new contract.

I get what you are saying. He's a populist. There was always an element among people on the right and the left who are populists. I remember when NAFTA was done. Trump is Pat Buchanan. And I asked the question before.... what happens if things don't go to **** with these tariffs?

I picked a good night to go hang out with a buddy. By the way... if you are like me, 51 years old, you probably have old friends that you are starting to only see at events like funerals. That's how it was with the guy who I've known since I was 10 years old, he was the best man at my wedding. Both still live locally and would see each other once every few years and give it the old "Yeah, let's hang out sometime...." In October of 2023 he reached out and we met up on a Monday night. Since then we've done that once a month. Before we leave for the night we pick our next date and put it on our calendars. We mark it down for Monday and Tuesday in case the Monday doesn't work. You just have to make the effort. Nothing crazy. We both get up early. Have a drink or two and a sandwich in a sports bar and relive the "good old days".