Truthiness strikes.

Stephen Colbert is now one of my heroes.

Here is a transcript of his speech.

That is all.

There's video out there somewhere, but all the sites I tried were slammed.

"Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's record," Selig said. "We don't celebrate anybody the second or third time in."

There was an Orioles game in the early 90's in which the Orioles had to scramble to find a replacement starter for the injured Ben McDonald. Big Ben's injury? He had cut his fingernails too short. This year, we have had the Kevin Mench story, featuring a major league baseball player who gets a pair of shoes that actually fit him, and immediately goes on a hot streak. Fingernail clipping and ill-fitted shoes were the funniest injuries I knew of in baseball, until I read this.

First,
OH GOD, NO! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!

Secondly,
I would like to see this film, though I suspect the ending is a total cop-out, since Jeffrey Maier is involved.

Asshat.

Collin Finnerty, come on down.

You served 25 hours of community service as part of a diversion program to avoid standing trial for punching a kid who asked you to stop calling him "gay and other derogatory names."

Now, since you've been arrested for rape and kidnapping in Durham, you get to stand trial for both crimes.

You're the pride of Garden City, NY.

Here I Go...

Due to the annoying infringement of grad school upon my reading habits, it took me a couple days to get to it, but Boswell's column in the Post about the O's is spot on. Angelos is quickly creating one of the most disgruntled fan bases in sports out of what used to be a loyal fans. He's also soiling the reputation of the organization that won more games between 1961 and 1987 than any other. The Baltimore Sun would tar and feather him at this point.

I never thought that the presence of the Nationals would matter that much if the Orioles could put together a solid team. After all, the Orioles had momentum, a great ballpark, and divisional opponents that fill the stands. However, by putting a substandard product on the field and by publicly undermining the ability of Nats fans to watch their team, Angelos has alienated a lot of the casual Orioles fans. Unfortunately, it's the casual fans that determine attendance. You're going to get your die-hards and your season-ticket holders at every game. Getting a family from Bethesda or Falls Church to come up for the game, though, is not to be taken for granted. Now you know.

In happier Orioles news, the Sun is reporting today that a new contract agreement with Melvin Mora is near, which would keep our All-Star infield intact until we have to negotiate with Roberts. The Mora-Tejada-Roberts trio is the only thing about the current Orioles that reminds longtime fans about the classic Baltimore teams. The handshake they've developed after an Orioles win actually shows a little team unity and a playful spirit. It's good to see the management trying to keep them together.

So this column could be about half as long as it is, but the phenomenon it describes is pretty awesome.
I just lifted weights and went for a run for the first time since moving to CA. Needless to say, I could throw up at any minute.

RDU gets JetBlue service on July 20th. I am more excited than I should be. Still no direct flights, of course- the one route to RDU is from JFK, but I could still get home while watching sports.

One lump or two?

Jon Miller just spilled Kambucha tea while broadcasting the Giants-Snakes game. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that the Giants broadcast booth is the only one in the league in which fermented mushroom tea is consumed during games.

Shake Shake Shake...

Today is the 100 year anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. If you live here, you're probably nervous. You see, the local media has talked about virtually nothing else for the last two weeks. We live two blocks away from the Hayward Fault, which seismologists predict will be the next troublemaker. Interestingly, it also runs through the Cal football stadium. Yesterday, the local NPR station ran a story about the fault running under Hearst avenue. I listened to the story in my car, while driving up Hearst Avenue. The quake coverage has been a little overwhelming for us, as there is almost nothing that we can do to prepare for the Big One.

They say you should be prepared to be on your own for 72 hours. We rent our apartment, and it's in a pre-1906 building, which is good or bad, depending on your perspective, but what that means is that we can only hope it's up to snuff. It's hard to imagine being on your own in the middle of a big city for three days, but we only need to look at New Orleans for an example.

I am quite ready for this anniversary to pass.

No need for Dr. Spock

A couple of pet policies for our future children:

1. If we become wealthy (unlikely, but still...) and have a daughter, she will clearly want to get a chihuahua. This is unacceptable, but she can have her pick of a) a real dog, or b) a chicken.

2. It's ok to get a ferret, but you need to understand that if it gets out of its cage, Daddy will beat it to death with the nearest blunt object. He does not like ferrets, and will not tolerate the freedom of any member of the weasel family in his house.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen.

Tonight K and I met up with our friends S & H to head into the city for Easter. We grabbed dinner in Chinatown, where H's attempt to order a rum & coke was a highlight, and then headed to the Top of the Mark for cocktails. The Top of the Mark is a bar on top of a hotel by the same name on Nob Hill, one of the highest spots in the city, so the view was really nice. It's also a block away from Grace Cathedral, so we had a nice view of it before we headed over for the Easter Vigil.

I'm always a fan of the Easter Vigil. I love the buildup, the drama, the beauty... the whole thing captivates me every year. The entire congregation left their pews to circle around the baptismal font. At the end, we all crowded around the altar, inside the communion rail, for the reading of the classic excerpt from St. John Chrysostom's great Easter sermon, the singing of "Jesus Christ is Risen Today," and the closing blessing. Apparently tomorrow they are going to drop a lot of rose petals, confetti-style, at the conclusion of one of the services. As we gathered around the altar, stray petals drifted down on us, leading us all to expect some sort of big drop as the finale. It never came, so we were left hanging a little, but I really was struck by the ways in which the liturgy both engaged us and put on a fine show. I'll not be joining a cathedral anytime soon (I'm a small-congregation, low church guy for now), but I appreciated the grandeur present on a night like this.

Every year at Easter, I get excited, imagining what it must have been like for the disciples of Christ to discover the empty tomb, what a simultaneously triumphant and unnerving day that must have been for them, the absoulute rawness of their nerves and emotions at the end of such a horrible week. Every time the Gospel is read and I hear the words, "He is not here," I just smile, thinking that this must be the ultimate validation and justification.

The Lord is Risen Indeed.

I just got a gift certificate to the school bookstore as a thanks for helping out with our program for prospective students last week. I used it to buy a book of commentary on Peter Singer, including Singer's rebuttal. I thought that a certain baseball conspiracy theorist in Chapel Hill might find that interesting, given the long discussion we had about Singer while consuming pizza and beer one night. Also, I used money from a religious institution to buy it... from that same institution.

It's sunny today, which is good, because Marin County is apparently going to lead California into the ocean if the rain doesn't let up for a while.

Maundy Thursday service tonight at the liberal parish in Berkeley. Easter Vigil Saturday night at the cathedral in San Francisco. Not sure where we'll go for Good Friday. On Monday, I'm brewing beer with some fellow students.

According to today's Baltimore Sun, Kris Benson had two pitches in his arsenal last year, presumably a fastball and a breaking ball. Under Leo Mazzone this year, he has added a cut fastball and a changeup. This begs a couple of questions.

First, how do you watch baseball and not realize that pitchers who throw cut fastballs tend to be very successful with them? Greg Maddux in the 90's was one of my favorite pitchers to watch, because every pitch moved. They're not even that hard to throw, other than the part where they need to be at least in the high 80's.

Second, did he really just add those pitches this Spring, or did Mazzone just get him to bring them back? If they're new, it's pretty impressive that he has good command of them already. If they're old, why the hell didn't he use them in New York? Ray Miller used to make pretty much every pitcher learn to throw a changeup. It's another dimension of deception and strategy at your disposal. It's an essential pitch for people who are not Randy Johnson and yet still plan to pitch more than one time through the batting order.

The O's are back at .500, which is my goal for the season. I have excellent seats to see them in Oakland in September, and I'd like for the O's to be decent at that point. At some point here I'll write about the A's, who have secured their position as my second-favorite team.

It was quite a weekend. Friday night, I led a small group of prospective students at my school. This is a brilliant set up, for all I have to do is show up and be completely honest about my experience here. Anyway, after I talked with them for an hour, K and I went to see Jim Gaffigan in San Francisco. He, as expected, was hilarious. I'd heard some of the material before, but his comedy is about 60% delivery anyway, so it was still quite funny.
After the show, we took advantage of the lack of traffic late at night, and explored the city a little bit, before getting on the Bay Bridge to head home.

Saturday we slept late, bummed around, and read for most of the day. We took a quick time out to hit the 5 cent sale at BevMo, which, when paired with Trader Joe's, is the best way to stock up a wine rack. Then, we helped orchestrate a surprise party for a friend here. She's a Lutheran seminarian, and is married to an Episcopal seminarian. It went over well, and we challenged the Lutheran school to a brew-off. This, my friends, is the definition of full communion.

Yesterday, K and I went into the city again, attending a Palm Sunday service at Grace Cathedral (Get the podcasts! Impress your friends!), and visiting the De Young Museum, which has an exhibit of the Arts and Crafts movement going right now. The exhibit was nice, and I enjoyed their modern art as well. We didn't make it through the whole museum, though. We returned home, had sushi with our friends who threw the suprise party on Saturday, and read the evening away.

Back to school today.

Alone at the top.

The Orioles are in first place. You heard me. We're 1.23% through the season, and Baltimore is on top. Don't call it a comeback. We've been here for years.

I've been reading a lot about globalization lately, as it will figure prominently in my thesis. It really makes me aware of how precarious my life is, and how fortunate I am to be able to do what I do. That priveleged position is also a key source of guilt for me and, I'd wager, for most Americans who are aware of it. It's easy to see why so many people are resistant to the forces of globalization. They present an enormous unknown commodity and challenge our traditional cultural and social identities. I believe that those forces, regardless of their ethical value, a) are unstoppable and b) constantly present us with chances to be better neighbors to each other and better stewards of creation. In my classes, this makes me an optimist.

Today we had a discussion about balancing our sense of justice against foreign cultural values. The case was the treatment of women in Southeast Asia and Mexico, in communities where multi-national corporations take advantage of pre-existing gender roles to generate a largely voiceless, oppressed female workforce. The tricky part is that the gender roles that are exploited are those of daughter, mother, and wife. The way these roles are structured, especially in SE Asia, would be highly offensive to most Americans, but is it our place to try to "correct" them? Against my every instinct, I don't think so, but I'm not sure. Cultures are not absolute. I take issue with the fact that American corporations (Japanese, too) indirectly set up sweatshops and factories in these places with conditions that have been illegal here since the Triangle Shirt Factory fire. As the "greatest nation on earth" we can afford to demand better.

So we all participate in this system. Something you own was made by women who were not allowed to use the bathroom, who were forced to perform extremely repetitive actions for hours on end, and who were verbally and perhaps physically abused at work. It is virtually impossible, as consumers, to be knowledgeable enough to avoid these economic interactions. How do we reconcile that to the fact that these systems, which make us wealthy, are flagrant violations of our basic calling to be people of God? How are we to use the leverage and privelege we have as Americans in a global economy? Someday I want to write a book about that.

curb your optimism

Anna Benson withdrew her petition for divorce.

It's good to be an O's fan.

We are tied for first place in the AL East.

In his otherwise useless column for the Baltimore Sun yesterday, Peter Schmuck reignited his feud with Fred Manfra, TV play-by-play man for the Orioles. Just to revisit the issue, if you are a very overweight sportswriter, and your name is also Peter Schmuck, it's probably best that you not dredge up fights with witty men who have to occupy three hours of airtime with something every day.

Miguel Tejada hit a home run, as did the supposedly disgruntled Melvin Mora.

And, last but not least, Anna Benson has filed for divorce.

Today I will subscribe to the MLB Gameday Audio plan. 15 bucks to listen to any and all games that I want to. Deal.

Everyone here is tired of the rain.