Well, shit.

Though I will get my act together and send an actual present, this link is in honor of a man starting his fourth decade on earth.

Big Country, as of today, is old enough to run for the United States Senate. President of the neighborhood association is merely a stepping stone. Happy Birthday, big man.

Let's get my baseball whining out of the way. The Orioles finished 40-41 at Camden Yards this year, the lowest attendance since the park opened. That includes 1994, the strike year. Jay Gibbons hit his wife with a foul ball. He blames the ballpark. In "God, I hate that place" news, Norfolk, VA will be the home of the Orioles AAA team, replacing Ottawa, which wasn't going to work anymore a) because it's in Canada, and b) because the Lynx are moving. About 1,000 people staged a walkout at OPCY to protest the ineptitude of the team over the last 9 seasons.

I've got tickets to a couple of shows in San Francisco, at the Warfield (seeing Gomez) and the Fillmore (seeing Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins), which makes me happy. Both concerts are acts I really want to see, and both venues are high on my to-do list as well.

In a moving show of solidarity with Big Country's laptop (is it Wrigley Field?), the display on my laptop stopped working on Saturday morning. The tech-support guy at Dell walked me through taking it apart, disconnecting and reconnecting the display cable, and then reassembling the computer (though I think I could have figured the last bit out on my own). So far, so good.

The Panthers had Steve Smith back this week, against a shitty team. They won. Go figure.

Carolina Basketball starts in 18 days.

From the Washington Post article on today's military coup attempt in Thailand:

"The armed forces commander and the national police commander have successfully taken over Bangkok and the surrounding area in order to maintain peace and order. There has been no struggle," a Thai military announcement said, according to the Associated Press. "We ask for the cooperation of the public and ask your pardon for the inconvenience."

I guess they're getting the hang of this sort of thing, as this is the 18th coup or coup attempt in Thailand since 1932.

So which is cooler, a Monday Night Football game (regular season), or the second place team in the NL West (the Dodgers) hitting back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs in the ninth to force a game against the first place team (the Padres) to extra innings, then giving up a run in the 10th and coming back with a 2-run walk-off homer to take a 1/2 division lead? Jaded Giants fans should attempt to remain impartial. No way is the Jaguars win last night the story of the day.

This is yet another post that I wrote to distract myself from US foreign policy. My current "thing that makes me want to vomit" would be the innocent Canadian citizen that we arrested based on shabby Canadian investigation, then extradited to Syria where he was imprisoned and tortured, without telling Canada. Could Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions be any more important at this point?

Football Sabbath

I did a bunch of reading today so I can fully appreciate the first full day of the NFL season tomorrow. I will miss some of the early game for church, but otherwise, it's football all day long, capped by the Giants-Colts evening game. Apparently the quarterbacks of those two teams are brothers. The media should really work that angle.
No Carolina Panthers coverage here tomorrow, as the local Fox affiliate will be showing the Seahawks / Lions game. Were the Panthers on, I would consider skipping church (1 PM games in the East are on at 10AM here).
K is out of town, so this is pretty much the only day of the season that I can get away with watching so much football in one day, knowing well that I will probably be watching both MNF games as well. Ordinarily I work out a compromise with her. The early game on Monday features the Redskins and Tony Kornheiser, so it's a much higher priority than the Raiders/Chargers matchup.
It's game time. Time to separate the men from the boys. These are the times when champions step forward, when sweatpants become acceptable attire again, and when football announcers stop sniffing glue long enough to utter some mindless macho cliches into a microphone. This is when the great ones come to the rise of the occasion. Happy football season, everybody.

This is fun...

Make your own at www.ronaldmchummer.com

I must live in Berkeley. Look what happened two blocks away from my apartment.

I used to live in NC. Look what's going on there.

This is great. All 12 people in attendance must have been thrilled.

This is just toying with my emotions.

wait for it....

... baseball.

After seeing the A's and O's play twice in the last couple of days, a few observations:

The "Rafael Palmeiro, I hope you get syphillis" phase of my baseball life continues, as I watch the Orioles struggle with the fact that they don't have a very good defensive first baseman. Friday night's game hinged on what was officially scored as throwing error on Melvin Mora. Really, it was a low throw, and Kevin Millar should have scooped it up. Today, Chris Gomez did pretty well, but his footwork around the bag still kept things interesting in the ninth. After pitching, I would consider this a top priority in the offseason.

Frank Thomas can clearly still knock the cover off of the ball. For those who'd like to criticize Billy Beane, just remember that the Big Hurt only makes $500K this year, and he hit his 30th HR today.

My wife has crushes on David Newhan and Brian Roberts. Alex Rodriguez remains unattractive.

The atmosphere at A's games these days is pretty electric. With the O's up 5-0 today and Adam Loewen having only allowed 1 hit going into the 5th, the crowd was still incredibly upbeat and focused in on the game. All I'm saying is that this does not happen in Baltimore these days. I've mentioned before how loyal A's fans are, and how much I love the energy at their games. It's pretty cool to be there when the team is really on a roll.

The Orioles really are pitching (everyone needs pitching) and a good first baseman away from being solid. Other than 1B, the infield is Melvin Mora, Miguel Tejada, and Brian Roberts, all 3 All-Stars last year, with Ramon Hernandez behind the plate. In the outfield, I like David Newhan, Corey Patterson, Nick Markakis, and Jay Gibbons just fine, off the top of my head. If a marquis player becomes available out there, great. Otherwise, we have more pressing needs.

I miss important phone calls sometimes...

The Big East may have more good teams in its ranks, but let's not forget that ACC basketball is pretty much an affair of the original 8 teams. The rest of the conference is merely a fashionable accessory to generate football revenue (the jury is out on BC). Now, somebody please explain to me how the core group, composed of UNC, Duke, NC State, Wake Forest, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia Tech, and Clemson can be beat.
Of course, you have the rivalries in the Big East. ESPN stops what they are doing to drool over the big UConn / Syracuse game, and broadcast it on approximately 30 channels. Wait, sorry. I was thinking about Duke / Carolina. We win championships, we beat non-conference teams, and we're fun to watch. What else matters?