more fun with numbers

the WHO has figured it out (who says they aren't on top of things) that calling these latest little nasties "swine flu" might actually be causing unwary panic inductees to improperly blame things on pigs. (sorry, egypt). no, from now on your delta tau chi name will be... "H1N1 Influenza A". if you look up H1N1 Influenza A, (imagine that), it seems that this particular variety over which we're being encouraged to panic, is actually descended from a whole bunch of DNA sources, including human and avian varietals. you can't possibly catch it from anything other than humans. (imagine that). oh, and btw? there are now two hundred and fifty seven actual cases confirmed!!!! 257!!!

257, as in, not fatalities, but people who have caught the bug. the actual number of fatalities, best i can tell, is now at a grand total of eight. (that's seven mexicans in mexico, and one mexican in the us, if you're planning where not to vacation this summer while converting your backyard nuclear shelter into an influenza pandemic pied a terre).

257 folks down with the flu, and 8 in the morgue. that's the bogeyman.

as we've also mentioned in here the other day, the CDC has already confirmed 13,000 deaths from garden variety flu bugs endemic to the US that have nothing to do with this particular strain. (that's endemic, as opposed to pandemic or epidemic, in case you're having trouble finding your reading glasses). 13,000. thirteen THOUSAND. as in, even if you're already dead, but hoping to be able to cite "H1N1 Influenza A" in your obituary, you'd have had a better chance of hitting the daily number the day you checked out than you would having your name come around on the big influenza death wheel that i'm sure the grim reaper is spinning just for you, just for fun.

thirteen thousand dead people, and not one major news story about it--not even as an asterisk to the constant stream of electronic diarrhea about those unfortuate eight who won the 15 minutes of fame lottery via their obituaries and the coincidence of the viral strain being responsible.

people are funny.

expressing your appreciation for heather unruh

as is mentioned somewhat frequently here, this blog is one of the web's go-to sites for information on the estimable heather unruh. it wasn't originally on purpose, as merely noting that she had the temerity to read the news with her glasses on seems to be all that's necessary for prompting all sorts of web traffic this way. but it's been duly noted, and, as either georgie jessel, bert lahr, red skelton or any number of other show-biz types may or may not have once said, "give the people what they want and they'll come out for it". so, with that sentiment in mind, and a reminder from a brief email exchange with a fellow lowellian blogmeister about statcounter for motivation, it's time to toss in yet another gratuitous post about heather unruh, because, after all, the entire world wide web wants to know, and, more importantly, it's always amusing to see the search words being used to find this silly little blog. (heather unruh glasses is neck and neck with heather unruh birthday this week--a very poor showing for the heather unruh bathing suit crowd, but maybe, finally, the web is becoming better behaved these days...)

anyway, for those of you compelled to pursue all things heather u., for a mere $250 each you can get your tickets to the franciscan hospital for children's annual community leadership award dinner down at the intercontinental hotel in boston on thursday, may 7th. in addition to ms unruh's star turn as mistress of ceremonies, you'll also get an earful of lenny clahhhk. i expect, if anybody does have the two-fifty along with the chutzpah to ask heather about swimsuit photos, that they'll mention that i sent 'em. no reason not to take credit for all i do to extend cultchah across the interwebz.

yw, heathah. ;-)

i had to...

i can't help it--it's the kind of guy i am. last night jonathan van every had the kind of game that fans and players alike remember for a very long time. journeyman minor leaguer... cut loose from the organization who drafted him... picked up by a contender... plays his first meaningful game against his old club... makes a couple of GREAT defensive plays, including a diving catch to save a sure run... comes up to bat with two outs and nobody on in extra innings, that he enabled by getting a clutch RBI a couple innings before... launches a home run off of his old minor league roommate to dead center field to win the game...

jonathan van every shouldn't have to buy a round in boston for a good long time. it's a good thing, because he's making the minimum ($400,000) in a millionaire's game, and it just wouldn't be right under any circumstances. but these aren't just any circumstances.

who do you think on the red sox is pulling the highest salary this year, now that manny is gone? here are some hints: captain jason varitek pulls down a cool $5M. league-leading hitter kevin youkilis, as well as league-best closer jonathan papelbon, make $6.25M each. ballyhooed free agent long-tosser daisuke matsuzaka earns $8.33M. so, is it josh beckett at over $11M? (nope). mike lowell at over $12M? (not quite). david ortiz at his well-deserved $13M? (you're still not there...)

to find the highest salary being paid to a 2009 boston red sox player, you have to look into the trainers room (is it the back or the quad these days?) to find one mr. j.d. (nancy) drew. fourteen million samoleans. i don't even know what that is per 8th inning strikeout.

put another way, mvp dustin pedroia makes $1.75M. japanese relievers extraordinaire hideki okajima and takashi saito make $1.75M and $1.5M respectively. staff lefty jon lester makes $1M. bulletproof (this year so far, anyway) reliever manny delcarmen makes $476K. leadoff speedster jacoby ellsbury makes $449.5K. ramon ramirez makes $441K. justin masterson makes $415.5. jed lowrie makes $414. wake's designated catcher, george kottaras, like mr. van every, pulls down the minimum $400K. in fact, you could have ALL of them, plus miguel gonzalez, chris carter, rocco baldelli, nick green and a whole truckload of the new kayem fenway franks, and still not come anywhere near the $14M that's being spent (wasted) on jd drew.

the only greater budget fiasco this year (at least among the red sox--we'll leave the real waste to the us congress) is the $9.25M inexplicably tied up in the horror show that is E6 "julie" lugo.

think of it: if you were to put nancy and julie together, and balanced them against the bottom 19 sox players combined (including 'tek, wake, dustin, hideki, takashi, et al.) you'd still have a million bucks left over to spend on antacid and antidepressants. or, if you were so inclined, you could invest in two-thirds of the entire payroll of the NL east-leading florida marlins.

you just can't make this stuff up.

quotable dreaming

i can almost imagine the conversation between theo epstein and terry francona towards the end of 2006:

"hey--what if we found a left-handed hitting, strong defensive right fielder to flesh out our lineup?"

"that's a great idea--that way, in close games, he could make great catches, and then come up to bat and maybe even win one for us."

"yeah--that's perfect".

no, that's van every.

two great run-saving catches. two clutch run-producing hits. imagine that. a ballplayer who's a BALLPLAYER.

imagine we had that sort of guy in our lineup every night...

fun with numbers

worldwide, in any given year, somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 people die from complications caused by various strains of garden-variety influenza. for example, in the us alone, since the first of january, the CDC has confirmed over 13,000 deaths--yet only one so far has been from the infamous "swine flu", and that one was a mexican toddler on vacation. some will argue that the numbers prove the need for decisive action. if regular flu can kill half a million, just imagine what a more-virulent strain can do. (did ya like my play on the word "virulent"?) gabon, for example, has stopped importing pork, even though you can't catch the flu from food. egypt has slaughtered every pig in the country, too, just in case, even though none of them has ever been to mexico. we here are not supposed to travel to or from mexico, and folks in europe aren't even supposed to travel to and from here because we're next door. yet, in every case and in every country, other strains of flu are already running rampant, just like they always do this time of year, every year, and killing people by the boatload.

want to know what i've figured out from the numbers? it's not going to mexico that's going to kill me, nor shaking hands with someone who has, for that matter. not even considering the fact that almost every single fatality out of the half million are either elderly (8 of 9) or juvenile (the other 1), the inescapable fact is that any one of us is at far more risk to catch something already going around where we live than to find someone who can pass a new strain on to us. and the stuff "going around" where we live is no less lethal than the stuff that we're making ourselves crazy to stop from elsewhere--it's just more common and harder to eradicate.

i know that doesn't make you any more eager to go out and shake hands with a sweaty stranger, but people have got to start using their heads about this or we're all going to drive each other crazy. it's flu season. get over it. (and don't play with babies and visit old folks homes while you're feeling poorly in the meantime, or send your sick kids to school just because it's easier than finding alternate child care).

the rest of it? i swear it's some bright guy or gal at the CDC or WHO trying to figure out how to preserve budgets in the case of upcoming funding cutbacks.

hockey

in honor of battling "flu-like symptoms" this morning, (as so frequently do so many nhl'ers), it's time to start sizing up the second round playoff matchups. looks like the bruins will have to make do without the rangers, flyers OR devils this postseason, which is a shame, but it would appear that carolina comes to play, so buckle your chin straps in any case. at least we got to finish montreal's centennial season in style.

the good news is that washington's victory over the imploding rangers will give AO an extended shot at evgeni malkin, which should be fun to watch. it's also fun to recall that vancouver's last game in chicago ended with a brawl, and there should be no end to the fun stuff in that match-up too. (vancouver d-man kevin bieksa's quote was something to the effect that "this is another team we don't really like"). and, finally, now that anaheim has shown how thoroughly it can shut down a quality offense, we'll get to see detroit tested as well. all good.

this week, friday night is hockey night!

E6

i've shamelessly stolen the moniker from a friend, who has, in turn, appropriated it from someone else, but it's too good to keep to oneself.

during last night's game, continuing a streak he began in earnest during the 2008 season, one mr. julie lugo had an error to go with his RBI. actually, it should be described as more than an error, since it failed to close the inning in which the next cleveland batter struck a three-run home run, but what's new with julie. i mean, E6. anyone want to start a pool on whether he ends the year with more errors than rbi? he couldn't quite do it last year, but you know what they always say about baseball! (just wait'll next year).

it should also be noted that, though he/she found it possible to find the baseball with his/her bat against all odds in the first inning for the game's first RBI, nancy drew did indeed keep it on his/her shoulder in order to strike out (with pedroia in scoring position, natch) in the top of the 8th. (1 for 5 on the night).

tito, your nation is calling you...

gerbils like ice

i know it's not natural, but as the mercury hit 90 inside the place here today, (the building doesn't switch the central system over to AC until may), and the rodents were lolling around in their separate spots of bare glass in the tank, i figured it might be nice to offer them a little something cool... I put a bunch of cubes in a glass bowl, expecting them to appreciate the radiational cooling, though remaining clear of the actual ice, but the little guys can't resist leaning in to scrape off chunks with their teeth. (though they apparently don't like to rest the pads of their feet on the ice itself while doing it, which makes the whole process extremely entertaining).

time to go out for a drive... it's curry and beer tonight down in westford with the boys.

wrong wrong wrong

you know the gutless buck-pass louis caldera used as part of his defense for ordering a 747 to fly laps around lower manhattan yesterday morning? you know, "federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in new york and new jersey"? that one?

here's a direct quote from the aforementioned "notification":

"information in this document shall not be released to the public or the media."

proper, my ass. every minute that passes that mr. louis caldera continues to draw a government paycheck is an abomination.

wake da man, wake da man

gotta be said twice today.

as we all know, cliff lee went 8 just about perfect innings against the sox last night, and held them scoreless in a way that almost no other pitcher in the majors can do these days. on the other hand, the sox had one-hit wakefield on the hill, and he threw seven that were at least as good. (we don't count passed balls against wake, not even when there are three in a single extra inning against the yankees while facing elimination--you know that). mr. jason bay, hitting fifth i might add, and thank you very much mr. francona, had the last word, albeit too late to give wake the win wake so mightily deserved, but better in time than not at all.

wake da man, wake da man

two by two

"the ants go marching" is one of those childhood nonsense songs that invites classic childish excess. all you need to do is think of words that rhyme with various numbers, and you can go on singing (and annoying the bejeebus out of everyone within earshot) for as long as you like. ("the ants go marching thirty by thirty and the little one stops to say amy speace sure is purty"...) (bottles of beer in the wall works great too, but only if you start with a number suitably high enough, since the author of that particular ditty did not have the forsight to count up instead of down).

so it is with the ants that a friend is once again relating stories of the annual formic invasion of the proverbial castle, and i'm fascinated by the response to the necessary observation that the carpenter variety actually does eat wood, as in wood frame houses, and seeing them every year like clockwork isn't the best of homeowner signs. it's what practical types observe. it would be like saying "hey, mister, did you know your car is leaking oil?" when you notice a fresh trail of it leading into and out of their parking space. it's meant to be helpful. it's certainly not meant to hurt or harm. so why is it that so many people are inclined to take such observations to be primarily directed at their anxiety bone, and not their best interest?

reminds me a lot of our "war on terror". yeah, i know, the obfuscators are busy obfuscating and changing the officialspeak on this, and we're calling it anything but these days, but we all know what i'm talking about, and we all (by now should) know that it's been a complete and utter clusterf*** at the administrative level right from the start. as soon as it was declared, anybody pointing at the REAL ants was labeled as "unpatriotic", which is just one step up from "a dirty treasonous traitoring traitor", and persecuted to the point where you had to know there was a file on them down at the new department of "homeland security" (which is about neither, by the way) much the same way that herbert hoover used to keep files on all sorts of people for their "communist tendencies", which, if you're trying to translate, is something closer to "we don't like your politics, and we're in power, so we get to use all the means of state to ignore the bill of rights in your personal case, and rely on the fact that nobody else will have the nerve to stand up for you so we can continue to be in power". because that's what power does, if you haven't been keeping historical score...

so we color code sanctioned national panic, wave the flag and blow up foreigners at hundreds of times the pace of any sling or arrow against us, and destablize the entire planet, both militarily AND financially, in ways that have heretofore been impossible to imagine. but we never get out the bug spray and point it where it'll do the most good, which is inside the frame of our own house.

so i'm hopeful my friend will wake up refreshed today, see the sun, and deal with what's what, which are some ants in need of a little (and by that i mean little) attention at the source. if there are a few that make it up to the sink, no worries, because ants like to go where there is water, just like most critters. you don't need to empty a can of raid near the vegetables when you see that, because you know if you're taking care of them at the source, then the outliers will disappear soon enough. no panic. no anxiety. certainly no ill-advised war that might include bug-bombing the neighbors just because you heard the little miscreants can travel. they're just ants, ya know? houses get them.

somewhere, over in somalia today, someone is whistling a little childhood ditty and smiling about the grown-ups they're going to drive to distraction with it...

even a sox fan knows THIS is wrong

some low-level government yahoo (louis caldera, head of the white house military office) yesterday sent a 747 circling the lower manhattan skyline chased by an f-16. (story and photos here). didn't tell bloomberg about it. certainly didn't tell the highrise workers streaming out onto the sidewalks in a panic about it. just let 'em circle there for an entire half hour while some guys took pictures. yup, that's right, the purpose, according to the proverbial someone in the obama administration, was to update photos of air force one. (yeah, that's right, the old ones weren't patriotic enough or something). in the classic government doublespeak of ultimate ass-covering, caldera had only this to say: "while federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in new york and new jersey, it's clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. i apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused".

"proper steps"???

even a sox fan knows that "proper steps" necessarily include "no, that's just plain wrong". but, even without that part, they still require calling all the major news outlets, AND the mayor of the city personally, to explain WTF you're pulling. manhattan. 747. circling. f-16 in pursuit. you do the math.

so my favorite line (and you know what i mean by "favorite" when i use it in these contexts) is "president barack obama was furious".

really?

i know the result when i'm furious. the reporters would all have been furnished with nice little press releases beginning with the words "louis caldera, head of the white house military office, was fired today by a furious president barack obama". because if it doesn't say that at the top of the little press release, then you know he wasn't, and he wasn't, and both of those things are, to me, unacceptible. but, of course, as is the case with republicrat cluelessness, we all know that none of that furious part ever really happened. not really.

just a fly-by to stir the patriotic juices gone ludicrously wrong, and everybody struggling to come up with excuses for the inexcusable.

even donald trump knows what to say when this sort of s*** happens.

oh, and as an asterisk at the bottom of f***'d up stupid "patriotism" running rampant through the washington like the runs through so many mexican swine flu victims, the news services have also picked up on recent evidence that the miscreant civilization-bombers of greater afghanistan and pakistan have started to turn up in nice cozy lawless places like somalia.

gee, too bad nobody thought to do a little pre-emptive nation building there, instead of killing 100,000 civilians in iraq so that we could add yet another unstable government in a place where extremists like to party...

*sigh*

how many is enough?

apparently, three isn't quite.

top of the ninth, and mr. jason bay has launched a decisive three-run homer to undo eight innings of cy young-worthy pitching by mr. cliff lee, and validate seven of them by mr. timothy wakefield. mr. michael lowell has just tripled, and there's only one out. you know you could always use another run. the .400 hitting and 1-for-3 on the night mr. jeffrey bailey is on his way to the plate. what should we do, mr. francona?

if you answered, "why, let's send in mr. j.d. drew to strike out", then you would be 100% correct. but, heck, even your .143-hitting catcher could draw a walk in that situation. tell me, terry, why the ever-lovin-f*** do we have to keep living this same old tired scenario out, time, after time, after time?

at some point we'll narrow down how many runs ahead or behind we have to be before nancy's bat comes off his shoulder to actually find a baseball. until then, at least we know that three isn't enough.

hockey update

could be the rangers, if we're lucky to get them next after montreal... though it could also be carolina or pittsburgh depending on the way the puck bounces on tuesday. it's a shame philadelphia couldn't last long enough for us to have a possible shot at them, but life doesn't have to be perfect to be good.

the corner of the eye will also be on the honda center tonight, when we find out whether the home ice advantage torch is fumbled or might live to fight again on wednesday. it would be great to preserve a chance to meet jumbo joe in the finals, but the proverbial hockey gods aren't always concerned about such trifles. the main focus must always be on taking care of the business that's put in front of you--but it sure would be nice to take a tour of madison square garden again with something meaningful on the line. (and give a little payback to sean avery for gutlessly popping tim thomas off the back of the head with his stick during that tv timeout awhile back).

speaking of new york nut jobs--how about "coach" tortorella and his o'reillyesque tantrum during the game the other day. seems clear that one of the washington fans felt generous enough to share his or her "beverage" with coach totalnutjob and that's nothing but shame on them and all of washington hockey fandom, but losing ones s*** and getting into it with the crowd is absolutely the example that led the blueshirts into their distracted malaise that's let washington back into their series. pains me dearly to see some other team having all the fun, but this kind of crap play is its own penalty, and you can ask danny carcillo if his handful of punches into the face of maxime talbot (what is it about these french canadians these days?) was worth the motivation pittsburgh took from the example, or the goal they scored exactly fourteen seconds later on their way to winning the game and the series.

some people can't be told, you know, they have to learn the hard way...

the proverbial tight quad

it's not nancy's back this time, it's his quad. sox nation is not discouraged for two reasons--first of all, taking a bat like that out of the lineup is a classic case of adding by subtraction, AND!!!, it's going to force the franconaman to give a try to either one mr. jason bay, or two mr. michael lowell, in the five spot. this can only be good.

we will be going back to the double-jeopardy black hole at the bottom of the lineup that we had in previous years, (julie was o-fer-six in his first two games in pawtucket, though he did manage two hits during his last "spring" tune-up), but with youk finally getting some backup, i think we're all willing to take the risk. besides, now that 'tek has some pop back in his bat, should one of the pawsox "volunteers" in right field find a way to be productive, it'll just be julie and papi in the dominican doghouse, and you know papi won't stay there forever. (another nice wall ball yesterday).

life is good.

more little things

count how many (few) times a major league pitcher ever throws three strikes in a row to start on a batter. almost always, when they go up 0-2, they nibble a little to test the hitter's patience to lay off something out of the zone. of course, when it's an experienced pitcher like andy pettitte, and a known commodity like jd drew at the plate, there's little reason to nibble after all. three pitches, three strikes, and the bat never left nancy's shoulder. two down. and so goes the bottom of the second inning... (though mssr's bay and lowell seem to have a different approach...)

in the 4th, andy started jd with the same two strikes, but then must have figured he had the proverbial yo-yo on a string, which he obviously did, since he threw the third pitch so far down and away that jorge posada scraped dirt getting it into his glove. six pitches. two strikeouts. tito? tito? anybody home?

so here it is in the bottom of the fifth, and papi scrapes the monster driving in a run while doubling to the opposite field. (ellsbury to third). i swear to god girardi had the four fingers up before the ball even made it back to the infield. youk to first with yet another intentional pass, and nancy to the plate with two outs. two things to say about that: first, jacoby stealing home was GREAT to see. goes to show a fan that tito does indeed know the probable out is coming, so he at least is trying to get his run(s) while he can. second, jd finally hitting something out of the infield with two outs and runners on in a meaningful situation was long, long, long overdue, and congrats for getting the rbi. doesn't change the fact that youk got walked and jacoby had to steal home because the 5 spot is one of those proverbial dead zones that verizon makes into funny commercials, but at least it's something positive in advance of julie turning back up in the lineup tomorrow.

i have no idea how i'm going to handle it...

nba = yawn

i'm having more fun following the rangers/caps 5-1 blowout via text updates than i am enduring this excruciatingly pointless nonsense in chicago. i honestly don't care anymore who wins, and i'm going for a ride in the car.

looking forward to the sox at 8...

the little things

i don't think jeter had even cut off swisher's throw from right center field on papi's fly out in the bottom of the 8th before joe girardi was already signaling for the intentional walk.

look no further than ludwick's april to understand why pujols' runs and rbi are better than youk's despite 100 fewer batting average points. just imagine where things would be with an actual #5 hitter.

tito, puh-leeeeze

fantasy loyalty

fantasy sports aficionados will tell you all about the irrational loyalty they'll show to players who they've "owned" in previous seasons against all present evidence to the contrary, and the reluctance they have to go with unproven commodities in their place. unfortunately, it would appear terry francona is exhibiting a little bit of the same affliction with his management decisions in the real world this season, and somebody needs to have a talk with him. (theo, are you listening?). to wit: josh beckett having not nearly his best stuff, yet somehow coming back out after the fifth inning with his 2 run lead, and promptly giving it all back as if we didn't know what was going to happen. c'mon, tito, you know that was against all tradition, logic, and better judgment.

however, i will grant you that pitcher management is generally a crap shoot, so the #1 complaint i have this season will remain the unfounded confidence being shown our present #5 sinkhole, i mean hitter, nancy drew. i mean, what else does jason bay have to do to show he belongs there, if not 3rd in place of papi? (even a rant like this takes a deep breath and pauses when the subject passes to papi).

i'll always give tito the big nod for sticking with pedroia years ago when he had one of the worst aprils ever recorded in the major leagues--faith in the unproven commodity. but it's different when you've seen a large enough sample size to tell you that some guys just can't handle the pressure of being in a critical part of the order in a critical situation in a critical game. (alcs strikeouts and sox-yanks 3-2-3 double plays are prime examples, and how amazing is it that we've seen 2 in back to back games this series). i'm guessing terry is trying to acclimate a lefty to hopefully help things out in big games in the future, (you know you have to have at least one of 'em), but, geez, how long does this have to go on before we all accept that this lefty is simply never going to be THAT lefty. (bernie carbo, we miss you).

nancy

bases loaded. no outs. tie game.

hits into a 3-2-3 double play.

tito, are you listening?

simple pleasures

every april around here there is a weekend that erases all memory of winter, and, this year, this weekend is it.

i cannot fathom why, for all the approving gestures and comments my newest simple pleasure evokes, that there aren't more of these drop-top pleasure domes festooning our highways. i know i can't be responsible for everyone else's shortcomings in judgment, but it just makes a person feel like shaking people by the shoulders and asking them what they heck they can possibly be thinking--except for the fact that i've got better things to do and better places to be right now.

don't hesitate to wave as i go by, though.

sox-yanks

it's the end of 9 1/2, and every sox hitter has a hit, save one. besides jason bay's clutch (dare we say papi-esque?) 2 run homer with 2 out in the bottom of the 9th while down two runs, there have been a series of defensive plays that have absolutely made the difference so far for the sox. (how 'bout that dustin pedroia). of course, one fielder dropped a ball that could have been caught that contributed to the deficit being 2 runs instead of 1...

we do all know how it ends 2 innings later. once again, the guy who has absolutely no protection at all in the order somehow finds a way to keep producing. the other guy, the guy who is positively cossetted between the best hitter in baseball right now and two more who aren't far off that pace, just throws an o-fer in one of those proverbial big games for which he has absolutely no answer in his repertoire.

tito, tito, tito, puh-leeeeeeze, can you find a spot in the order where this guy's head won't keep him from killing us? lowell and/or bay are the bats you know ought to be up there in the order.

next, after that, we can begin the forensics on the gruesome and recent death of papi's bat...

the playoff beard

it's a hockey tradition, and who am i to question it. lucky for me my job doesn't usually require public presentability, though i'll toss a nod to the sabres fans who once published a guidebook on how to deal with beard-unfriendly office politics.

the real question i've never found satisfactorily answered is whether or not trimming is ever allowed. some "purists" swear no, not ever, but many superstitious players cheerfully alter the facial manscape along the way (after a loss, for example) and who are we as fans not to stand with our guys in all things? (no word yet on how to manage the "other" manscape, but we're tuned to nhl.com in case there's word...)

myself, i like to draw the distinction between the main beard and the little scraggly areas around it, just in case i ever need to consider a little cosmic karma-ic shake-up. right now, though, i'd observe that there's no reason for razors to be used anywhere in the greater new england area. (no, there are no brazilian hockey players).

girls, you can play along, too. ;-)

tugging on superman's cape a second time

as has been observed here recently, there have been a few hommes coincidentally employed a few kilometres north of le vermont border who have been given to some poorly-considered professional judgement over the past few months. josh gorges goading patrice bergeron into a four-punch knockout the other night was, to that point, perhaps one of the more striking visual examples. however, last night, mike komisarek, the pride of west islip, new york, (you just can't make this stuff up), decided that he hadn't had enough of BC farm boy milan lucic, and insisted on one more go-round.

i won't bother you with the clips of mike cross-checking milan in the face (drawing blood AND a five minute major penalty, which, given it was in montreal and perpetrated by a montrealer, is pretty rare indeed) and all the other schoolyard crap that was pulled up to the point where this video takes over. however, i will gloat just a little bit that it took milan a grand total of one punch to drop mike to his knees on the ice and end the sorry mess. (bonus on this video is the recap of the previous set-to which is no less entertaining for its length as this one is for its brevity).

as elvis costello once crooned, "some people can't be told you know / they have to learn the hard way".

congrats bruins, and congrats montreal on the fitting conclusion to your 100th year celebration. many happy returns.

you just can't make this stuff up part i don't know how many

offering further proof that you just can't make this stuff up, lisa redmond once again has a beaut in the lowell sun. this one's from last friday, but it's as timeless as habs fans whining about injuries and referees, (they do it even when they win, so it's not like they're hypocritical about it), so please enjoy.

apparently, this past february, "JT" was hauled out of his truck/home in the back woods near nashoba valley ski area where he had been hiding out since skipping bail in november on rape charges fron an incident in may of 2006. it's not clear from the story if his level 3 sex offender status was from this case or another adventure, but you can add "failure to register" to the growing list of JT's upcoming legal headaches, and lets just say life can be tough these days if you're an indigent guy with an extracurricular foot fetish.

however, don't mistake my snarkiness for a lack of sympathy for JT's current situation. first of all, i'd like to make it clear that i wouldn't want folks like wendy murphy to take offense or imagine me an apologist for guys like j. james marzilli et al., because you can look back through the posts here and see what i've had to say about him and his ilk, but under the general heading of "innocent until proven guilty", this particular story has too much going on to imagine we've heard anything near to the whole thing. lisa, if you're listening, we're begging you for a follow-up.

the prosecution's story, courtesy of prosecutor elizabeth dunigan, is that JT was cruising around downtown lowell (around closing time, i'm guessing) in his truck, and coincidentally offered to help a 24 year old drunk woman and her boyfriend with an out-of-gas situation. as is common at that probable hour, the destination was set to santoro's, whereby said boyfriend was to marshal his peeps for assistance with the gas. however, "when he returned to the truck, his girlfriend and [JT] were gone".

now here's where i have my first problem with what we're being told. first of all, from the blue shamrock where said drunk girl was getting her drunk on, to santoro's where all the after-hours shenanigans seem to originate, it can't be more than a half a mile. 10 minute walk, TOPS. (more like 5 if you're in a hurry). nice safe main streets. it's a pretty thin premise that a guy in need of a friend's aid would be flagging down strange motorists to help with the distance, but i guess the drunk girl must have been already out on her feet by then, so who knows. the second thing that begs inquiry is why, after losing ones drunk girlfriend to a stranger in a pickup truck, should that be the last we ever hear of said boyfriend in the story. does he just go home and say, "aw, shucks"? in any case, we now have to fast forward to an ayer motel room where JT was said to be (by his alleged victim) ministering to her phalanges, and by that i don't mean fingers.

so she's drunk and her "boyfriend" doesn't seem to be close enough to be concerned (or maybe he is just close enough to be familiar) about her disappearing with the first guy to offer a ride. fair enough. i can accept that. and it's pretty clear that it's no stretch to accept "the alleged victim passed out in [JT's] truck from her alcohol consumption, according to court documents". so the third part of this story that has my face scrunched up in a knot of "huh?" is that, when she awoke to find her toes being thoughtfully moistened by her new friend, she simply asked to be taken back to her car in lowell, to which she was promptly returned by our man JT, and which now, according to the story we have in the paper, has somehow regained it's necessary supply of gasoline for the ride to the cops to report a sexual assault.

am i the only one who can't get their head around this one?

she was drunk, of that i have little doubt, but the "gas" and the "boyfriend" and the "i passed out" business are just a little sketchy for me to take without question. "[JT] told police he had consensual sex with the woman, with some toe-sucking involved". of course he did. you just can't make this stuff up.

but here's where i think JT will never get a fair shake on this one: "also on his five-page criminal record are charges of trespassing and disturbing the peace after he was ordered to stay out of the o'leary library at umass lowell for claiming he was doing a study on reflexology and conned people into letting him give them foot massages."

wendy, i'm not saying he didn't do "it", whatever "it" is, but i am saying that we're definitely into some murky territory here, and the "she said" part of he said she said on this one is absolutely ripe for some close cross examination.

note to self: don't pick up drunk chicks coming out of the blue shamrock. (that is, unless you've brought them there yourself, and wasn't that a st patties day weekend to remember).

four is more than three

by the final five minutes of last night's stanley cup playoff match between the boston bruins and the montreal canadiens, you could see it as plain as day.

bob gainey has an fascinating nhl coaching record. of course, his primary job these days is as gm of the most successful albeit fading sports franchise in north america, (the montreal canadiens have won 26% of all stanley cups available since the cup challenge was issued, which puts them ahead of the 2nd rate i mean place new york yankees, though that percentage is dwindling with each passing season mssr gainey is in charge, and, as a matter of enjoyable fact, they're both approaching asymptotically towards zero), but, once again this year, bob gainey has decided that he would be a more successful coach than the guy he himself had recently hired, and so he's stood himself behind the canadiens bench for the swan song of their centennial season. as bugs bunny would say, what a maroon. (did you know the montreal maroons were the team for which the old forum was built?)

anyway, back to mssr gainey and his 10 centime head...

a few years back bob gainey fired claude julien as coach of the montreal canadiens because claude hadn't produced a stanley cup fast enough to suit the cup-mad habitant faithful. never mind that claude had produced a very competitive team--coach bob had run the minnesota north stars down from a cup finalist to "did not make the playoffs", (and been fired by the eventual dallas stars management for his shortcomings), so, obviously, bob figured that he was the man for his own job. (whereas bob promptly engineered the canadiens 2006 first-round playoff exit). so, after putting guy carbonneau in place to take the fall for the next season where the talent simply didn't exist to compete, (the gm's responsibility i might add), the team surprised everybody by taking first place in the eastern conference the very next year. you'd think that would have been to guy's credit, but, however, this was of no consequence to the cup-or-die mentality and the peter principal, and bob once again put bob behind his own bench.

the gainey canadiens finished the season playing .500 hockey, (guy's winning percentage was, of course, higher before he was fired), but, now in the playoffs, they're still searching for their first win. he's put a goon who can't skate on his top skating line, and left a child in nets to do a man's job, and somehow he still just doesn't get it. claude julien, the guy who had to be fired for not being able to make a silk purse out of the bleu blanc et rouge sow's ear, has cobbled together a team full of kids and castoffs to thoroughly kick the crap out of everybody else in the league. (only san jose finished with a better record, and just look at what they're doing with it against anaheim).

the telling stat from last night was how montreal had the energy to throw 21 "hits" against the bruins in the first period, yet only 12 for the rest of the game. by 15 minutes gone in the final frame, they were so out of gas that they couldn't reach a single puck to save their playoff lives. claude julien just kept rolling four lines, not even bothering to match a checking line against montreal's best, and waited for gainey's over-use of mssrs kovalev and brothers kostitsyn to blow itself out. claude's fourth string even produced a goal. gainey's first produced absolutely nothing.

now THAT's how you coach a hockey team.

patriots' day

"patriot day" (no "s"), like the "patriot" act that ensued, remains in their naming a stain on the legacy of the past presidential administration.

on the morning of april 18th, 1775, farmers left their families and everything they had worked their entire lives to build, to put their lives on the line for an idea. were they to fall on the field of battle, as for example did isaac davis and abner hosmer during the first volley at the north bridge in concord, there was no safety net for their families--their sacrifice was both for a purpose as well as ultimate. these are the patriots for whom this day in april is named, and these are the patriots against whom all others must be measured.

on the morning of september 11th, 2001, workers left their homes to go to work, not to put their lives on the line, but just to live them. were they to encounter tragedy, the same as any of us may encounter tragedy today, there is an entire nation to stand with and beside. their horror on that day is beyond us to know, and the courage of those police and fire men and women to rush to their aid beyond measure in their heroism. but these were not patriotic acts--they were perhaps even more than that--they were simply civilized, human ones. they were perhaps the best of all of us, and perhaps better than any of us will ever be able to achieve in our lives, and right to be honored forever. but to be confused between such and patriotism is to forget our country and our ideals, and to fall victim to the basest of propaganda.

sapere aude.

patriots' day is the day to remember those to whom we owe our freedom. to a man on the line along the concord river, i would bet today's "patriot act" would seem an abomination and the very reason for which they bore their arms. tyranny was their enemy, not the men in the red coats who stood against them, and tyranny is the danger still. inventing things upon which to wage "war on" is a propagandist's tool, not patriotism.

my two favorite quotes from our founding fathers are franklin's, and jefferson's:

in february of 1775, mere days before blood was shed at lexington and concord, ben franklin spoke to the pennsylvania assembly that "they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety".

then, over 12 years later, from his post in paris, thomas jefferson wrote to william smith and added that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".

amen.

the heart of the order

while mr. ortiz continues to try to figure out what's wrong with his swing, (though nothing wrong with his first inning double today), tito francona has decided to pay a little attention to the #5 spot in his order--you know, the one behind kevin youkilis that ought to be the #1 spot in the major leagues for rbi? yeah, that spot...

so today, we see the estimable mr. baldelli, and an instant 2 runs in the bottom of the first inning. first of all, it's nice to see petey get a hit after jacoby got his double and a stolen third, and even nicer to see big papi rap a quick double to keep the inning going. but it's in the DP or K black hole that's been mr. drew's bat this season that i much preferred to have rocco coming to the plate. and nobody is going to complain about a grounder that produces a run, as producing the run is the key element of that at-bat. (are you listening, nancy?)

i know tito is still hiding behind that righty/lefty thing, but pretty soon he's gonna have to make a decision.

OH!

and in case you think i'm not able to give jd any credit at all for "everything" he does for his team, i do have props to offer for his 2nd inning at bat from yesterday. if you might recall, youk doubled to open things, and nancy immediately popped out to third to follow up. nothing remarkable there, but after jason bay struck out, mikey lowell was able to bloop a will-he-or-won't-he-catch-it single with TWO outs instead of one, (had JD done anything else other than his usual), and youk was able to be running on the crack of the bat and crossed the plate easily with the run that carried jon lester's shut-out afternoon until dustin p. got the insurance tally with his single in the bottom of the 5th. if jd had managed a hit, youk would have had to hold up in case it was caught, and we could have remained tied instead.

so, yeah, thanks, nancy.

who knew patrice bergeron was a lefty?

in his five years in the nhl, patrice bergeron, to my knowledge, has never dropped his gloves. he's one of those visor guys--think jean ratelle, not phil esposito--and though he's good with the body in the open ice, he's all about the puck in the corners, and not the kind of guy to go after if you're any kind of a hockey player other than the frustrated and cowardly kind. but so it was the josh gorges had had his fill of trying to compete with every other bruin in the tougher parts of the ice, (besides marc savard, perhaps, and phil kessel, who are the only other bruins anywhere near as gentlemanly as patrice), and joshie boy came to get petulant (think damon wayans doing two snaps in a circle while stamping his foot) with patrice bergeron towards center ice towards the end of the third period of last night's complete and convincing facewashing of les boys. (think mark knopfler singing "les boys", as in "les boys do cabaret", with the emphasis on "lace boys"). punched him in the face with his glove on, even.

and so it is that we learn that patrice bergeron, though he carries his stick and shoots and scores as a righty, is really a southpaw after all. four punches. lights out. qed.

i think taking on patrice bergeron and then getting the crap kicked out of yourself (not to mention getting yourself knocked backwards to the ice half senseless after less than half a dozen quick ones) is very much analagous to tugging on superman's cape, and then wetting your pants. the bruins are already the bigger, better and more determined team. now they have EVERY reason to go for it all up at the tinkerbell centre.

go bruins!

push comes to shove

the sox home schedule is set long before the nhl arranges their playoff calendar, but with a ball game every day, it's not easy. it turns out that someone has, as you might expect, dropped the proverbial scheduling ball, and push has indeed come to shove. the sox take the field at 7, and the bruins take the garden ice at 8. unfortunately, a person cannot be two places at once.

i have an offer of bleacher seats on the table, but i don't care if they're behind home plate--i'm not sitting anywhere tonight that's not in front of the black and gold. it happens the other way around in october (during good years) and nobody is confused by the priorities. playoffs? gotta be there.

well, ok, sometimes "there" isn't actually at the garden, as there are only so many tickets to see the canadiens during the playoffs, but a tv with a bar full of like-minded fans is the next best thing to being there.

go bruins!

really funny

Yup

too funny

i don't know much about cocktail recipes--if it doesn't come out of a tap, consider me ignorant--however, this doesn't keep me from appreciating one particular moment from last night's b's game at the bar:

cue almost-impossibly ridiculous fright-wig hair (picture a cross between liza minelli, complete with bug eyes, and yahoo serious) on top of a blazing black-and-white print blazer stretched ridiculously atop black stretch pants, stretched nigh onto their breaking point... (don't forget the painted-on eyebrows...) throw in a couple of sex on the beach cocktails, (i had to check with my barmate on the exact concoction, as all i caught were the final splashes of OJ and cran to the mix), complete with requisite orange slice, and then...

"could you take out the orange slice? i'm allergic to oranges"

yup, she stood right there, as did the rest of us, watching the bartender pour the oj into the booze, and then, with a straight face, she asked for the orange wedge to be exchanged because she was allergic to oranges. (needless to say, she slurped the drink down with all its component oj with nary a hesitation or inconvenience).

the extremity of her poor dietary habits was written all over her billboard-sized back side, but, hold the fresh fruit, because that doesn't agree with her.

too funny.

go bruins

game 1 was a good one, with the out-of-towners refusing to quit, and there were no surprises in that. of course, the hab cheap shots after the b's scored their 4th goal were completely junior league, and, of course, there were no surprises in that, either. (as for canadiens fan reactions after the game--i think the great canadian whining frog is the quebecois provincial mascot). with the rangers winning the night before, and teasing of the possibility of getting the blueshirts next, it is indeed today a very sunny day. (we just need philly to wake up in time so we can complete the trifecta).

our new allies

after WWII, the marshall plan proposed to do something rarely tried in the history of the world, which was for the winner in a war to spend its own money in an effort to restore the vanquished. arguments of economic colonialization aside, in the end it proved a very positive piece of geopolitical jiu jitsu, and it succeeded in helping to make germany into one of our most stalwart and dependable allies. (i'm betting that no other european country, save ireland and great britain, has an higher incidence of english-speaking citizens, for one coincident factoid). japan didn't get the handouts, of course, but it got all the coincident encouragement and cooperation (our investment there during the korean war certainly didn't hurt) and they're another big turn-around success story for the ages. (it could be argued that the cars alone make the friendships worthwhile, but maybe i'm being selfish).

so it is today that we find cuba and iran making positive noises about closer communication, and i wonder if the people in power are able to see both the irony as well as the historic opportunity in that. imagine a middle east where the two largest muslim powers (turkey and iran) are reliably on our side... imagine major league baseball opening franchises in havana and elsewhere in the carribean and other areas of latin america, and all the economic ties that would undoubtedly evolve from sox (and other) fans travelling there the same way we take over ballparks in toronto, baltimore, and even oakland... (did you hear the cheering last night?)

i'd say we do best when we export friendship. folks see how we live, (which would be, up until recently, very well), and they can't help but want some of it for themselves. i'm thinking we ought to rationalize tehran as being no worse today than it was when we were propping up the shah, and havana no more oppressive than it was under batista, and simply start moving forward on the presumption that things always keep getting better, if we let them. (south africa is certainly continuing its progress, as are we, just 150 years since abolishing slavery, and 50 since actually ensuring everybody has the right to vote). sure there will be setbacks, and our own "patriot" act has to be counted among those, but we are always optimistic about ourselves, so there's no reason not to be about others. (who, via immigration, are all the same as you and me, too, right?)

not for nothing, but...

it occurs to me, reading of ahmadinejad's announced openness to craft a new framework of discussions with the us, about their nuke program and everything else, that, among all the peoples of the world most inclined to dislike and distrust fanatical arabs, (and be concerned about a destabilized pakistan), we probably couldn't find any more committed than the persians. (imagine sitting exactly in the middle of a fractured and violent iraq on the one side, and far worse in afghanistan and pakistan on the other, with your only other neighbors being turkmenistan, turkey, armenia and azerbaijan).

of course, ahmadinejad's up for re-election and being dinged publically for putting anti-western rhetoric ahead of "it's the iranian economy, stupid", and the "supreme leader" wasn't quite so encouraging a few weeks back after obama suggested he might be interested to talk, but i personally think this is a natural opening for us to consider another way in the world.

asymmetry

daniel gilbert's "stumbling on happiness" and his ny times feature "he who cast the first stone probably didn't" raise fascinating questions for us all to ponder about our own hypersensitivities and proclivities for irrational and unbalanced ""force escalation"". (ought to be required reading in any divorce proceding, IMHO). it occurs to me, reading about the impending implosion of pakistan, and the possible proliferation of nuke-ready terrorists, that we're on the cusp of a fascinating chapter of human conflict, where there truly is no symmetry between the opposing sides, except the symmetry of mutually-assured destruction. (appropriately acronym'd as MAD).

if we've blown up entire countries (along with hundreds of thousands of civilians) in response to losing half a dozen buildings and plus or minus 2500 people from a few misappropriated airplanes, what is our next logical response to having a nuclear device detonated somewhere coincident with our "interests"? ("interests" being apparently a more sensitive issue to us than actual people). it's not hard to imagine the wherewithall existing for some pakistani malcontents to consider sailing a container ship into elizabeth, nj and pressing the detonate button. (i won't even make a joke about elizabeth, nj, so you know how serious about this i am). so what then could we possibly choose to do?

we certainly couldn't afford to dismantle any additional sovereign states, as much as we might want to throw our geopolitical weight around after having our nuclear nose bloodied, owing to our imploded treasury and fully-stretched military capabilities. and you KNOW there are going to be some very vehement voices within our military industrial complex who are dead set (pun intended) on letting nukes fly in response, if only for symmetry's sake. so where is this all going to get us?

i keep going back to that fateful day when dubya did his disappearing act in the face of crisis and tragedy (contrast to rudy marching down broadway with his peeps) and then only surfaced many many hours later to claim specific grievances and rights of retaliation, (as if knocking down the world trade center towers wasn't an attack on civilization as a whole instead of just america as one illustrative example--and how completely self-involved of us to think so), and swear vengeance.

so dubya and cheney and rummy got their vengeance, and we, all these many years later, are getting a failing pakistan as our parting gift.

karma is a bitch.

jd nancy drew

jd "nancy" drew has played in five games thus far this season, including four of the five sox losses. in those five games he's managed a grand total of 3 hits (in 20 official at bats, meaing he's batting .150 if you don't have a calculator handy) and left 16 guys on base. SIXTEEN. oh, some might recall he did hit a solo dinger in one of those games, (to go with his other rbi on opening day), but, if you'll notice in the box score from that home run night, in his other 4 non-HR plate appearances, nancy managed to strand seven sox runners. SEVEN. (the sox lost by one run, in case you're counting). some guys play for a week without seeing seven baserunners. i'm not sure how many times in a season anyone even finds it possible to strand seven baserunners in a game. but our nancy boy has been hitting behind a .567 on base percentage, (yook!), and enjoying somebody on base almost every time he sees the plate these days, (16 baserunners in 20 at bats), so he's got all the ammunition he needs to give julie lugo a run for the "miss boston red sox 2009" tiara.

yup, more k's than hits. almost as many runners left on base as at bats. just one long continuing nightmare for all of us from game seven of last year's alcs.

tito, puh-leeeeeze

navel gazing

nobody is going to want to read this, (even if they could make sense of it), but i'm feeling compelled this morning to write it, so please go ahead and skip to the next one. if you're wondering, like all the rest of the stuff here, it's being written to myself, so that i might read it again some other time and (hopefully) take some of it to heart. i've got a long way to go.

i have come to believe we have to will ourselves to be happy, and will ourselves to trust others as the way to that happiness. (and accept them for who they are). the tricky part is when others will let us down, and come up short of our wishes and expectations. many resort to anthropomorphizing their frustrations into the same people they perceived to be the source of their frustrations, but there's no salvation there, since we can only control our frustration, not the "shortcomings" of those around us, which aren't shortcomings at all, but simply just who they are. (at least that's the way I did/do it).

so who's the one coming up short? the person who simply is who they are, doing simply just what they do, or the rest of us who are projecting onto those others our expectations for them to be people who really don't exist? the world has no shortage of folks who feel aggrieved by the unfairnesses that puts them into their perceived state of unhappiness. i can easily see why it ISN'T fair. it's not. but there's no future in believing the solution to be beyond any control. if you believe the cops are always going to bust you--guess what, they are. illegal aliens illegally immigrate. terrorists terrorize. pirates pirate. criminals commit crimes. my ex was always going to complain that I wasn't doing it right for her, that's for sure. (does that prove me the marital criminal, i wonder?) so you have to decide what to do next that's different from what got you into your little corner of misery, regardless of how unfair it is, and how much extra effort it's going to be for you than it should be. i tried to fix my marriage, but couldn't, so i didn't end up here any other way than by accident, but i'm still amazed at how hard it is for all of us to break out of those walls we perceive to be surrounding us.

they're stronger than any real ones could be, that's for sure.

and the solution isn't in the SOLUTION, per se. the unfairnesses of the world may very well be beyond solving. if the sun explodes tomorrow, what could we really have done about it? all we can do is resolve our cheerful demeanors, and our devotion to others because it's the right thing to do. maybe they'll repay our kindnesses to us, and maybe they'll repay them forward, and maybe they'll always need more than they can give. so do we allow ourselves to be unhappy and get into the german grandmother thing and turn it into a contest of wills? (the grandmother always wins, in case you were wondering, and none of us ever get to be the grandmother--it's one of newton's laws, i think). or do we become so small that we cannot accept the likely fact that we may very well be receiving more than we can possibly give back?

my fear is to live forever in that bizarre state of selfish denial. my bliss is to reach those moments when i'm giving of myself without concern about anything else.

stanley cup fun

the bruins play the canadiens, just like last year, only this year the seeding is reversed, and there will be no need for seven games to send the top dog on to the second round. (you heard it here first). almost as much fun will be watching san jose battle anaheim out west. (i'm giving the edge to jumbo joe and the sharks in that one, but the ducks should be good for six or seven games on the way). flyers-pens is the only other matchup with a little classic rivalry spice, and you have to like philly to pennsylvania-pummel sidney's nancy boys in that one.

i'd really love to see the rangers survive washington just so we can beat the crap out of them in the second round after we finish warming up on the habs, but my head tells me the broadway boys are likely to get mauled early and often. (though we can hope, can't we?) jersey-carolina should be a ball to watch, as the hottest team in hockey meets history's ultimate playoff round cooler.

out west, you have to love st louis vaulting into the sixth spot on the last day of the season, so as to get inconsistent vancouver instead of the detroit juggernaut in the first round. can steve mason hold off the motor city guns long enough for nash and company to solve ozzie? who knows... i also think chris mason is enough of a match for luongo to send that series into serious doubt, too. as for chicago, who knows which team will show up against calgary--that one's another one that could go either way, too.

if the world were a perfect place:

east round 1:
bruins over canadiens
rangers over capitals
devils over hurricanes
flyers over penguins

west round 1:
sharks over ducks
redwings over bluejackets
blues over canucks
blackhawks over flames

east round 2:
bruins over rangers
flyers over devils

west round 2:
sharks over blues
redwings over blackhawks

east championship:
bruins over flyers

west championship:
sharks over redwings

stanley cup finals:
bruins over sharks

that way we'd get to see b's-habs, b's-blueshirts, and b's-broad street babies, which is the trifecta of eastern conference hockey. (and a little flyers-pens thrown in just for fun). out west, besides sharks-ducks, we'd get the classic detroit-chicago matchup, which only leaves us missing flames-oilers, but, hey, what can you do--edmonton sucked this year.

oh, what fun it would be to meet jumbo joe in the finals!

get me some of that NAVY sniper training

snipers are an interesting weapon of war--coldly methodical and deadly. but somebody is going to have to explain to me how sniping is accomplished from the rolling deck of a ship onto the rolling deck of another ship with such flawless accuracy as demonstrated today by our navy seals. three shots (at the very least) when even the slightest inaccuracy would guarantee disaster to the hostage already at gunpoint. (the dead wouldn't have even needed to move their aim).

hitting something at distance is hard enough. hitting something at distance while you're moving and they're moving seems more like miracle to me, though i know it can be no accident that captain phillips is free. i'm thinking there are at least three guys tonight who are deserving of quite the commendation.

keeping the seat warm for mr. lugo

jd drew--is there a reason for wasting the millions AND the roster spot???

good news

the seals have had their day, and richard phillips is free. three pirates are killed, and the fourth is held with the opportunity to make of him an example. the old example was "from the yardarm", but i should think some patient gathering of intelligence might be a useful alternative. then, since we're hell bent on nation building these days, perhaps we might steer some of our fleet south and deploy a few divisions in ethiopia, eritrea and sudan for a chance of pace. i don't know about you, but i'd rather be looking at pictures of marines handing out food to the starving than having to picture them coming back from iraq in body bags. (that photo thing again, sorry). i'm sure there are a few hundred thousand iraqi civilians that might have agreed with me five or six years ago, too, before our cowboy diplomacy got them killed...

next, we can put the screws to north korea. everything else is cowardice.

homeland depravity

even out of office, the legacy of dastardly dick cheney and his front man, dubya, continues. the department of homeland "security", as much a misnomer as the "patriot" act that gives it teeth, has been so long at this "war on terror" that it hardly knows who the bad guys vs the good guys are anymore, and it's really starting to get scary.

suzanne gamboa, AP writer, (a title that seems to mean something these days), has released a story that details repeated abuses of citizens rights that are chilling, outrageous, and so vile and against the spirit of the united states that its hard to even know where to start to describe them. so i'll just let you read her words, and wonder about what you might choose to do if and when they should choose to come for you. because, unless and until this heinous apparatus of state oppression is dismantled, such stories will continue to be inevitable.

this country is an IDEA. it is our declaration of independence, and our constitution and amended bill of rights, and nothing more. as we attack these, and disgrace them by our attacks, we are chopping down the very and very precious tree of liberty by which we all are joined as one, and we will be left with NOTHING when they are gone.

arg

piracy is a oft-romanticized practice of ultimate lawlessness. for the captain of the us maersk alabama, luck has it that such criminals are also the ultimate capitalists, and rarely interested in violence over lucre. and so we negotiate.

what's frustrated me for years now is the trillions we are flushing down the sewer of our "war on terror", where instead the combatants are sociopaths. it's a fight any moron, but, apparently, not dick cheney nor the previous administration, can see is not worth fighting. (it's kinda like jumping into a back alley in order to get into it with a bunch of junkies armed with needles). but fight we do, (while killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process, not to mention ruining the economies of entire countries, not least of all our own), and years later we're still staring down those same crazed lunatics we got into it with in the first place.

and, yet, just a few miles away, there are vacuums into which nations can be built for a tiny fraction of the cost; people in alleys who would mug you for your watch, but really would rather find better ways to make a living. it is from these little anarchic microcosms that most piracy blossoms, and it's not hard to figure out the quickest way to get these folks off our seas and out of our shipping lanes would be to give them something else to do. but we simply don't do it. why is that???

we have awacs and lcs and any number of tech systems that can track these imps of capitalism, and we have the planes and helicopters to intercept and disable their fleets within minutes of recognizing their nefarious intent, but the vast majority of our tech and our planes and our helicopters are mired in the desert chasing mirages. well, reagan sold a starry-eyed nation on the concept of locating and intercepting a hail of ICBM's within seconds across half the globe, yet we're swallowing the BS that we can't find a few boats that our cargo captains can see right there with their binoculars. yeah, it's a tricky problem given all that ocean, but it's a problem that we haven't even bothered to try to solve, and you know we have everything we need already to solve it.

oh, yes, except one thing--the morality and good sense to start.

made in...

when i was a boy, "made in japan" was synonymous with cheap, in all connotations of the word, and "made in usa" meant quality first last and always. (ah, the good old days). well, always isn't always always, and somewhere in the mid 70's the world started to turn upside down. by the end of a couple of decades, "made in japan" came to mean quality (not to mention cutting edge) and, well, "made in the usa" became better characterized by certain motorcyclists wearing t-shirts emblazoned with "i'd rather be pushing my harley than riding a rice burner". oh, how the mighty fell. the good news for harley riders is that the AMF experiment was mercifully short-lived, and the mark is once again a matter for unmitigated pride. the good news for other americans is that our japanese cars, including those made in america, are the benchmark of the world. (i love mine, that's for sure). the bad news is that there's always a low-cost producer out there, and, unfortunately for us and the rest of the world, it's now the free-market-no-government-oversight chinese.

our childrens toys are painted with lead paint. our pet food (and even some of our human stuff) is tainted with melamine. now, as reported by brian skoloff and cain burdeau of the AP, our subprime-mortgage-financed new homes are built out of toxic chinese drywall that they don't even know out of what it's made. and there's really not a whole lot we can do about it, because the people who have made these toxic products are well beyond our jurisdictional reach.

"made in china"

caveat emptor

the obvious object lesson here is that government absolutely has a role to play in the "free market" system, and "less" government is not always more of anything but heartache. clearly, prudent oversight was lacking in our present financial difficulties, and prudent oversight should be our priority when choosing what government agencies to fund (or not) while we unwind the consequent fiscal calamity. one on which not to skimp would appear to be the one that inspects chinese products and approves them for use (or not) here in the us. what? we don't have one dedicated yet? i vote we take a huge chunk of that hugely-wasted homeland security budget and dedicate it right now. american companies employing american workers deserve nothing less towards the security of their business.

there's a real cost to things rarely borne by consumers. costs of shipping are understated by the costs of the navies out there policing (or not) the high seas. costs of drywall are no less confused by the hidden shortcuts that enable chinese companies to make a killing, literally, and then skip scot-free. it's about time we figured out how to reflect those real costs into the products that are given the privilege of our markets, and let free enterprise figure out the rest.

until then, color me happy to drive my japanese rocket sled into and out of my grand all-american, circa 1886, factory building home with the all-american drywall.

summer getaway

first reverie i had upon signing the papers on my new convertible was of rolling up the nova scotia coast to halifax with the top down and granite brewery beer on my mind. (not sure if it'd be the best bitter or the peculiar in my first glass, but i'm quite sure either'd be in front of a schooner-sized tureen of henry house seafood chowder in any case). the cat from portland to yarmouth is a piece of cake, and it'd even give me a perfect opportunity to revisit duck fat the night before. (and the evening after, too). what else is summer for?

(non) sense of (non) urgency

the market street market remains closed behind papered windows...

careful what you wish for

there are two kinds of sox fans--those who WANT to play the yankees for all the marbles, and those who prefer to avoid the anxiety. (i sat next to one of the latter during wake's 3 passed ball extra inning in game 5 of the '04 alcs, and i really had to feel sorry for him). those of us among the former understand it was zim's bizarre obsession against bill lee that cost us the '78 pennant, not facing the cheating yankees and bucky f. dent's corked bat, and everybody knows the truth--'04 would have been a shadow of itself without '03.

and so it is that i look forward to the b's-habs tilt tonight at the gahden free from the bizarre notion held by some "fans" that the season would best end without the canadiens in 8th place. they'll say it out loud--they want either the rangers or the panthers in the first round of the playoffs, and most of all if le bleu blanc et rouge would sink to 9th and miss them entirely. i fear their fear is even acute enough that they'd sour-grape themselves in the unlikely event of a canadien victory tonight that it likely ensures they'll be washington's problem in another week and not ours, and so it's not such a bad thing. whuh???

i WANT the habs for best-of-seven next week. i want to live the dream, and the dream does NOT include stealing a cup without being able to remind les habitants forevermore that they helped us win it by being such a sorry excuse for a team. oh, i'll admit, there'd be something poetic to their missing the playoffs entirely in their centennial season, but, let's face it, that's got nothing to do with what is more important, which is grinding it out on our nemesis and skating that victory lap around le bell centre on our way to lord stanley's big party. (oh, if it could only be the forum once again...)

truthfully, i've never felt quite right since the 70 and 72 teams sandwiched their non-canadien-contested cups around ken dryden. later on, sure, it was fun to finally, after 45 years of futility, beat the habs in a playoff series back in '88, but it's not winning the cup, and it's definitely not winning the cup after beating the habs. (which has only been done once--in '29--when dit clapper and eddie shore won the first of our five).

so color me black and gold tonight, and only sorry that the league arrangement will no longer allow the bruins to ever meet the canadiens in the finals. those were the days...

do we even listen to ourselves?

iran has put another 1000 centrifuges online, and continued to refuse to engage in dialogue that does not presume and allow them to keep right on enriching uranium, just like all the other free peoples with bombs do, which, apparently, scares the beejebus out of everybody else with bombs, apparently because already having one is the only possible justification anyone with a bomb is ever going to accept about anyone else ever hoping to have one. (do we even listen to ourselves???)

if i were a member of the iranian government, i'd find it very hard to accept anyone's opposition to my enriching uranium while the folks who don't like me very much enrich all they please. i'd kinda feel like i was being asked to play cards against a stacked deck. i'd definitely think my #1 priority ought to be building a bomb asap, since no other option would ever truly even the international playing field for me and my constituents. it's pretty simple electoral math, and i'd expect to be voted out of office if i didn't apply it. (could you imagine trying to get reelected in the us in the 50's and 60's on a platform of abandoning nuclear technology?)

plus, in addition to such simple geopolitical math, there's even a prodigious pile of plausible deniability too--the rest of us are all chicken-littling about the need to phase out fossil fuel, and nuclear power is as carbon neutral as it gets. (just add cooling water...) so, what is it, exactly, that we're hoping to argue here?

i expect the preceding paragraphs have ignited a firestorm of righteous indignation among the readership, including words like "rogue state" and "supports terrorism" and "religious extremists". and then i have to wonder, what's more rogue than fabricating evidence and using the lie to declare war on another sovereign state? and what's more supportive of terrorism than standing by while an ally murders the better part of a thousand foreign civilians, employing banned weapons like using white phosphorous nearby to those civilian targets? and what is more religiously extreme than having a passel of presidential candidates actually raise their hands when asked if they believe the earth to have been created 6000 years ago and that dinosaurs never existed?

it's a classic case of "are so" vs "are not" on the playground, and you know it's an argument that'll never be over, let alone won. worse yet, right now, we're still the bully who is going to keep asking for that lunch money no matter what, and you know, sooner or later, that little guy isn't going to want to hand it over. (it'd be the american way not to hand it over, so why do we doubt it's going to be somebody else's, too?)

so what do i think?

i think the really dangerous miscreants out there are kim jong il and friends. (starving population... global pariah... nothing to lose...) the fact that we aren't helping the chinese to put the serious public screws to them is bizarre to me. what greater threat exists in the world right now???

as for the iranians, i should think the choices are two: either expect 'em to arm up, or expect them to expect us to arm down. either way, there's not much to talk about.

budget balancing opportunity

right now, liberia and a few other tax-friendly (free) states contribute the flags under which the vast majority of international shipping ships. today's piracy story regarding the us-flagged maersk alabama brings to mind a very worthwhile point regarding the true cost of international shipping. if we were to put forth a modicum of the effort we're spending (wasting) meddling in other people's sovereign affairs, and instead were to put it towards safeguarding us-flagged cargo and tanker ships on the high seas, we'd likely have a lot more registered here, and contributing their fair share to our national treasury.

what is terrorism?

a cowboy once defined for the rest of us as a very, very narrow definition of the word, but i'm daily reminded of what a hazard that sort of narrow-minded thinking really is. over the weekend, it was a sociopathic rogue state flexing its capability to launch death and destruction over long distances and the heads of millions of innocents. yesterday it was the omnipotent state railroading a defenseless (note that i didn't say innocent, because that's not the point) citizen. today it's a boatload of criminal miscreants hijacking yet another tanker on the open seas off the horn of africa. and in each of these cases, there is no "war" being brought, or even being considered, to counter the threat.

why is this?

today, another 20 us citizens are held hostage to our nation's blind pursuit of selective morality. if i were responsible to face their families and explain why nothing will be done directly to save them, i'd have a very difficult time explaining the billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of soldiers committed to nominally similar objectives just a small distance away. (giving us the benefit of extreme doubt that it can possibly be humanitarian interest that's caused us to cause the death of hundreds of thousands of civlians).

tell me, are the parents trying to raise families amidst such lawlessness on the horn of africa somehow less worthwhile than the ones across the gulf? are those dying in the desert to their immediate west (in far greater numbers, btw) somehow less worthwhile than the ones to their northeast?

i'm sickened that we were led by such craven cowardice for so long that we're dug into such a deep hole that we can't become better international citizens any faster than we're trying now. as for trying, if we're in it to build nations, i say let's start where we can do more good for more people more quickly. of course, if we're in it to stop terrorism, then i'd say let's commit ourselves to stopping all terrorism, starting with the kind that sports verified wmd and the means to launch them long distances, and definitely including the chronic sort (e.g. somali piracy) that can be directly addressed with reasonable means. and, finally, if we're just in it just to f*** with people because we can, (and you know that's closest to the truth), then lets be honest with ourselves about it, and put the objects of our f***ing up to a vote, so we can all have a say about who gets it first. (sorry, a-rod).

updated to note that capt joseph murphy of the massachusetts maritime academy has relayed a conversation with his son shane, second in command of the maersk alabama, reporting that the american crew is once again in command of their ship, some 345 miles from the closest us naval vessel. i expect there is a stirring narrative (and perhaps even a movie deal) percolating in here somewhere. hats off to the crew, and here's to considering rapid-reponse air cover to the shipping lanes so that our flag can mean something once again on the high seas.

long enough

one of the advantages of being a hockey nut with a baseball thing is that my calendar is always fully covered. i'll watch the pats each week, too, when they're on, but the nfl is becoming almost as arbitrary and timeout-choked as the nba, (wait--that last comment is under review), and it's hard to see the point of watching referees blow whistles for three hours in hopes of seeing a little sport in between. (the difference being the between-play time in baseball IS the game).

i just wish there was a better solution to the seasonal overlaps than "we'll join the bruins game in progress as soon as our sox coverage is over".

opening day was supposed to be monday, and i get that, but vying for a president's trophy comes almost as infrequently as contesting for a cup, and it's unfortunate that there isn't better respect for what's going on down at the gahden this spring. it's been a long time since there's been a chance for may hockey around here, and it would be nice to be able to savor every moment.

they talked about it being such a long time when bobby brought the cup back to boston on may 10th, 1970, but it was only 29 years after dit clapper and milt schmidt had captured the cup in 41, and there were still plenty of people around who could remember, and tell the stories. however, since bobby's second in '72, it's been a solid 37 years now, and the memories are becoming harder and harder for some to come by. nope, it's not 86, nor even quite the 41 it took the patriots to hit pay dirt for the first time, but it's been long enough, that's for sure.

NESN--you listening?

emmet sullivan for governor of alaska

the first thing bill shakespeare did when he allowed his characters to envision a better england was to give them the immortal words: "the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers".

today in alaska, given that actually killing them is (probably) wrong, us district court judge emmet sullivan has done the next best thing, and appointed a special prosecutor to go after the whole stinking lot of them who were behind the travesty that was the ted stevens corruption trial. now, trust me, i'm not saying that the dishonorable mr. stevens wasn't up to some manner of no good, as i'm pretty clear on the details that he was, (tens of thousands in home renovations don't just happen without knowing whether or not you've paid for them), but i AM saying that whenever the minions of the state are allowed to flaunt the rules to this extreme degree, if we aren't all as one in calling for their heads, we are party to the destruction of what remains of our proud country.

who gives these lawyers the idea that it's ok to cut corners and disrespect the rules? for one idea, i'm further saying that al "i don't recall" gonzalez and john "just call me mr. patriot act" ashcroft are two of the first two names that come to mind, and i wouldn't mind seeing someone find a way to put them in the dock, too. (remember johnny a's farewell note--"the objective of securing the safety of americans from crime and terror has been achieved"? that one was a beauty--i wonder if ted stevens would concur).

prosecutorial misconduct is a very real threat to americans each and every day. the "patriot" act, for one example, hands them all too much unconstitutional power (i still can't believe this hasn't been ligitaged at the supreme court) to do whatever the heck they please in pursuit of whomever the heck they please, and if it weren't for ted stevens' notoriety as an ex us senator, i'm not even sure these cowboys up there would have been caught with their hands in the prosecutorial cookie jar in the first place, and that's a scary, scary thought.

here in boston we had fbi agents coddling murdering mobsters and quite possibly engineering the deaths of innocent law enforcement agents in favor of their mob malefactors. i'm sure in every city across the country there are countless other stories of chilling terror, too.

because that's what this is. terror. not terror to die in a fiery explosion, but terror to have no defense against the state whenever it chooses to go after one of the citizenry that's deemed to be out of line.

come to think of it, if that "patriot" act were ever to come to any good at all, maybe they should look up to see if there are any provisions that can be used against these guys up in alaska.

every cloud, after all, deserves its silver lining.

smart weapons

i like smart weapons and rapid deployment forces. yeah, they're expensive, but they're impressive as hell (don't discount the intimidation factor--the swiss have been successfully exploiting theirs since the dark ages) and they ensure that small-time folks wishing to do evil can be dealt with swiftly and decisively. (recall saddam's aspirations for a 19th province, for example). however, from what i can tell, smart weapons require a hawk's eye vigilance against pork barrelers and others who would milk weapon development budgets and produce fragile and possibly-worthless white elephants, (e.g. they're still trying to figure out how to make an ABM that works however many trillions later), and rapid deployment forces clearly benefit from frequent tune-ups in the field to ensure a sufficiency of combat-experienced personnel.

so i read with dread this morning that our economic implosion (to me, clearly caused by our foolish squandering of the national treasury on failed geopolitical policies and a horrifically draining campaign to "spread democracy" and "nation build" in a place where the english more or less drew the lines to ensure it was completely pointless, if not practically impossible--"iraq" being the colonial pommie pipe dream that's no more a nation than the former yugoslavia or ussr, and you can ask the serbs and croats how often they've had each other over for dinner recently, or how often that chechens are invited to the movies in moscow) is causing us to need to dismantle and disarm some of the most impressive weapons we've got in our bag.

ok, so i recently pointed out that a single F22 could buy a whole boatload of stuff that goes bang, and that there might be more pragmatic ways to cut the pie, but i think the general point is that as soon as we start paring down our preparedness we sow the seeds of our own future hardship at the hands of someone(s) bent on mayhem.

the most disgusting realization about all this, is that pouring tens of billions of dollars every month down the sewer of someone else's problems is the single most direct and significant cause of our present insolvency. yeah, a lot of folks are going to argue that point, citing wall street robber barons and the ongoing home mortgage crisis, but to them i would simply point out that the robber barons have been robbing us all along (we just haven't been paying close enough attention to notice) and the full sum of questionable mortgages could have been wiped out with the stroke of a pen with even a small fraction of the banking bailout funds already flushed down the wall street sewer. (unfortunately, sewers into which cash can be flushed are everywhere, including our own front yard).

so this morning we'll be lowering the budget flag to half-funding mast, and saying goodbye to a lot of stuff i'm betting we'll miss in the very near future. (those north koreans seem bent on starting something, for one obvious and chilling example). nobody seems to be wishing to say it at the eulogy, but i will:

if the measure of victory has anything to do with the condition of the parties involved, then i'd observe that everything we've declared "war on" in the past few years has been winning, and in many cases winning decisively.

time to put a few smart people on the trigger of our smart weapons, and find a smarter course.

how to beat us

if anyone without means or courage were to want to take us on (by "us" meaning the good ol' u s of a) they could hardly go wrong to study this whole "war on terror" thing, which, i might add, it's pretty clear that we're not winning. word is now that the F22 and a whole lot of other big-ticket weapons programs are needing to bite the budget bullet, if not take one in their entirety, so let's recap, shall we?

1) richest nation on earth, 2) with the economy that single-handedly grounded socialism to its knees still running at full-tilt at the time, 3) and a military second to none in the history of the world. then add a couple dozen miscreants with a couple of pilot's licenses bent on murder, and a horrific spectacle of burning and falling buildings...

so we bust ourselves and bust our economy burning out our military capacity chasing shadows around some of the most defensively-advantageous terrain known in this world (only switzerland appears better naturally fortified), kill or cause to be killed a couple hundred thousand innocents, and then wake up with the hangover to end all hangovers with our entire way of life teetering on the brink as we all cross fingers that the economic flood tide, like the recent red river, doesn't carry us and all our hopeful sandbags down an icy flood plain towards the nowhere that is winnipeg.

and what did these miscreants have to do to accomplish all this? basically, after taking one of the world's most historically cowardly jabs at the nose of the bull, just run for cover.

remember the american revolution? truthfully, george washington wasn't much of a field general. he was so woefully exposed near new york near the start of the whole thing, that if the english weren't essentially laughing so hard at our military ineptitude and unpreparedness, and disinclined to act quickly in the bad weather, they could have rolled up the whole revolutionary "army" in the tidal swamps of either side of the east river in a matter of hours. lucky for us, the one brilliance george possessed, other than being one of the most remarkable statesmen in the history of the world, was to know that his job was not to beat the english, but to preserve the continental army. he retreated in time, before the english got motivated to pursue him, and then led a series of tactical retreats over a period of years that has become legend in the annals of military history. the english never knew how to fight him, nor learned in all their years here on the continent. score one for the u s of a.

so, fast forward 220+ years, and ask me what the F we think we're doing. i have no idea.

you from around here?

i don't get asked the "you from around here?" question all that much. i guess it's an odd quirk of nature+nurture fate that i lack the most obvious linguistic markers of my life's mise-en-scene, though, every time i fasten the buh-ens on my parka (not pahkah) it's my own little inside swamp yankee joke that all most folks can hear is the presence of the R and not the absence of the T's. truly, there's no other place in the world i could be from if you're listening, (my people are buhrried here, and if i had any auhnts they'd be buhrried here too), but because my annts arr-ent berried heeyah, a lot of folks just can't quite catch the distinction. but not every new englander sounds like mark wahlberg, ya know? which is all neither heeyah nawh theyah, except that i've noticed that the confounding lack of distinction-catching isn't just about how some people might sound when they speak while others aren't listening.

a musician i admire for the subtlety and sublimity of her artistic expression coined, perhaps by accident, but i'm still gonna give her full credit, a perfect little expression for me and perhaps others like me when she tossed off the sobriquet of "downtownie", and, yup, that's it in a nutshell. nope, not a townie (not by a country mile), but not an alien from somewhere else foreign, either. no, i live in a bizarre parallel universe that most folks from around here never really visit or ever know. oh, they pass through from time to time, and sometimes they even work nearby, (which makes it all even more ironic), but they're not from anywhere near where i'm from, even while they will never really consider where i'm from to be anywhere at all.

so it is that i'm reading somebody's blog--somebody possessed of all the local patois and perspective to supposedly know. it's a very enjoyable blog, too--full of lots of local color and colloquialisms. and they mean well, they really do... but there it is, about one of my most treasured local establishments to which i've become such a regular that basically help myself when i'm in there like i'm related to the owner or something, as natural as breathing... "soon to open"...

huh???

who knows where i've been doing my marketing all these months, but, apparently, if you're from "around heeyah", but not downtown here, i haven't been doing it yet. makes a guy have to stop and laugh a little...

nope, i'm not from around theyah. i'm from around HERE. folks ought to come downtown and visit sometime, cuz they might just get to like it.

and, if they do, i'll recommend they stop over at c'est for a look-see. they might very well find something they'd like. (i'd recommend the shaw farm all-natural and organic whole milk that's sweet as spring, especially in a few weeks when the cows get their first mouthfuls of the new spring grass and it's really something to spin your whole world around).

"you sure are purdy"

yeah, what billy/buddy/joe from the double wide trailer says--amy speace is moreso than her photographs can convey, and her voice is more than the records can capture, too. on top of all that, the sound in franklin was outstanding, the seats as good as they can possibly get, (front row center), and the kindness of the performer to converse and sign and make feel at home was remarkable. she even thought kindly enough to bring rich feridun along to make his telecaster sing duet, and it was all good. all very, very good.

the records are very good, to say the least, too. i got ahold of an older collection at the show, ("fable"), but "songs from bright street" (you can get it on amiestreet, of course) is the sine qua non (so far) that wants to be heard all the way through. (amy wouldn't let me take fable home by itself without confirming i had the other--she gets it--for which i was proud to tell her i snagged the goods of amiestreet, cuz you know how i love to plug amiestreet). as for the new stuff to appear on her upcoming record, the harmony with ian hunter (yes, THAT ian hunter) on the studio version of "the killer in me" is not to be missed. (you can find it on her myspace page). hopefully it'll show on amiestreet, so i can keep my "no retail cd" rule going and get ahold of the goods at the same time. (allison krauss and robert plant being the exception that proves it, so to speak).

so what can i say? if you missed it, you missed it. maybe on my next trip down to nyc by way of jersey city i can time it with a club show, and get the whole tearjerks experience. bet that'll be a time.

thanks, amy!

really?

white house spokesman ben labolt is quoted today as saying larry summers "has been at the forefront of this administration's work to shore up our nations financial system and to put in place a regulatory framework that will strengthen the financial system and its oversight — all in an effort to help the families across america who have paid a very steep price for risky decisions made by wall street executives"--all this AFTER financial disclosures have quantified summers' pay as managing director of the d.e. shaw group hedge fund, ($5.2M), and his $2.7M in speaking fees in front of organizations like jp morgan chase, citibank, goldman sachs and lehman brothers. (apparently, what larry had to say to those wall streeters before joining the obama adminstration didn't quite do the trick yet).

as seth meyers and amy poehler are inclined to say, REALLY?!?

the obamaniacs are quick to whip out copies of the policies and "rules" that they say are protecting the people's interests from the lobbyists and industry insiders being hired into their administration, but i feel the temerity coming on to suggest that the best policy to protect people from lobbyists and industry insiders is not to hire them in the first place. if this administration and its chief executive were serious about protecting us it's obvious there are more effective ways of doing it.

but you know the answer already, don't you.

they have zero interest in protecting ours, and they never have had. have you looked at the political contribution summaries from the big wall street firms? it's a who's-who of national politics on BOTH sides of the aisle. (because, after all, to keep the charade going, they rotate the players on top like a giant political shell game in hopes we'll forget the fact that the pea never quite turns up under our shell). putting larry summers in charge of financial services policy would be like hiring recently-fired GM CEO rick wagoner to be in charge of administration industrial policy.

are we paying attention?

bailouts are corporate welfare, and the beneficiaries are all the guys like summers who take home 7, 8 and even 9-figure paychecks at the top of the pile, while businesses can't get credit to keep from having to lay off all the taxpayers who are being put on the hook to pay for it all.

the fact that they can even talk about this kind of thing with a straight face nauseates me.