Never Was A Friday Chat So Richly Deserved

The whole concept of TGIF has been laid aside somewhat since the disco era. Something happened around the time the Smashing Pumpkins were being miserable. I think it was then because when the Smiths were miserable at least you could still dance to it even if you had to try a little too hard sometimes.

  • Update: What is it with today that there is muchly going on? Anyway, here is another lunchy update. John Gushue has provided this excellent passage on the Colbert Report‘s addressing o’ the nuttiness that is wikipedia and its attack on reason in favour of buying bulk:

    Over the last month, Colbert has given us another gem: wikiality. “What we’re doing is bringing democracy to knowledge,” Colbert said on his July 31 episode, as he introduced the word. He then invited his viewers to log on to Wikipedia – the open-source encyclopedia that allows any user to edit most any document – and write that the population of elephants had actually tripled in the last six months.

    The population of elephants has in fact declined, but Colbert – the persona, it should be remembered – argued that environmentalists could be corrected on anything if enough people said it was so. Colbert’s fans – heroes, he calls them – did so, with enough volume to crash the site temporarily, and (more enduringly prompting Wikipedia to lock down almost two dozen articles containing data about elephants.

    Colbert made his point, but that was just the start. A month of so after it was coined, “wikiality” at this writing returns more than 290,000 hits on Google, and has spawned a funny site by that name. (With, yes, a full – and fictitious – entry on elephants.) The so-called Web 2.0 revolution has been made fun of before, but never so sharply or so well.

    “Wikiality” now joins Web Twenny as my favorite “new era” commentaries.

    One further thought: won’t it be nice when we soon have a word for the sort of dope who believes what is read on a blog over authoritative sources? I suspect that will be one characteristic of the impending but not yet here new broader era of post-post-9/11 thinking. We are still, as you know, locked into the many forms of gullibility in the pre-post-post-9/11 world that that terrible tragedy unleashed as one of its many unanticipatible, incoherent and tangential off-spring. I am thinking of a word. It might be “clog” but I sorta used that up with the concept of “clogging” though they are not unrelated.

  • Update: David Frum just said this on NPR’s The Connection:

    Military action has a better record of solving problems than social work does.

    Exactly one pack o’ lie. If you, as it is reasonable to do, include social welfare and public health in the concept of social work, this is the classic example of an unchallenged toss-off line that a guy like Frum uses as a bullying smoke screen hovering above his eloquent vacuity. He moves on to pose the argument that if you do not have regard for the policies of George Bush, you cannot have regard for human life. Dopery. Next time you are with Frum, please ask him to slow down and explain himself before he moves on to the next unfounded postulate. It is a technique that would make the finest used car salesman blush.

  • Update: Nicholas quotes a quotable quotation about blogging that is worth a link and a repeat:

    Sadly, I’m willing to bet a fairly hefty sum of money that almost none of the [. . .] bloggers who linked to it originally will link to my attempts to rectify their misunderstanding. Because after all the point of blogging is not to have an interesting discussion; it is to make fun of people who don’t agree with us, in the company of like-minded companions who will reinforce our conviction that other opinions are risible. But we’ll know, won’t we, dear reader. And the important thing, of course, is that we all agree . . .

    I have had to use and separatelty defend the use of my manners policy this week and I am happy to do so. I believe that there is a place between demanding and enforcing gawk-jawed fawning acceptance of the blogger’s party line on the one hand and, on the other, promoting mean-spirited auslandering and screaming finger-pointery of any and all. That zone is called civil discourse and that is that thing I want here. It is ok, therefore and because the world is full of them, to call some one a dope and their ideas dopey but only if you can support the allegation with supportable examples and links to evidence. It is never right to call someone a mother(#&$*&ing dope even if you have such examples. Fair?

  • Gary remembered the Pretenders this week which was definitely a band that you could dance to as you were thinking about how Monday took you back to the chain gang. Both their self-titled first album in high school and Learning to Crawl nearing the end of undergrad were massively important.
  • Speaking of undergrad, I started it 25 years ago this week. That is uncomfortably more than Oldie Olson when I think of it. I remember thinking I was getting creeky when I hit 25. Jeesh.
  • So what if we are chilling the relationship with China? It is a totalitarian dictatorship. That should be a simple, straight-forward rule. No kissy face with dictatorships. And while we are at it, how about doing it with these guys, too.
  • Is modernity getting you down?

    The fast pace of modern life is the biggest health worry, a survey says. The public cited lack of exercise, lack of sleep, fatigue and stress in their top five concerns with passive smoking and drinking much lower down the chart.

    I have a trick. Ignore expectations. And now that I am truly Oldie Olson, I can be left alone to do so. For years I was a junior slob, a man ahead of my time in terms of going to seed. Now my age is catching up to me and I am thinking that middle age is the true era for Gen X slackers. Like childhood, it is an era in which much is done to you. Unlike childhood you have a credit card and know how to use dirty words usefully.

  • This is actually interesting. One of the reasons we have shock of the new is that the internet for a long time has effectively erased the past by not archiving pre-digital era events in a handy-dandy fashion. Through YouTube we have regained the videos of our youth and Google has now launched the Google News Archive Search which apparently goes back 200 years. Soon I will be able to meet my old anxtity youthful self on the internet so that we can look at each other and call each other losers.
  • Watching local New York state TV as I do – as I am doing – I am getting the election ads and I have to admit watching ads with strong leaders without right wing agendas is quite refreshing. Say what you like as you demonize Hillary Clinton, she is a shoe-in for repeat Senator due to her hard work as a local representative for the state. The funniest thing is people who thought she was a carpet bagger. No one with the name Clinton can be a carpet bagger in upstate New York as far as I can tell.

Must run now as I leave you earlier to hoist weights each morning. I am aware that “hoisting” implies something more than the actual weight I throw around but if I use words like “hoisting” and “throwing around” it sounds cooler and more effective than it actually is.

I Was This Close To The Stage

As time passes and you get older you forget you laughed a lot over bands like Foreigner and so you now think it is kind of cool to walk around the New York State Fair and listen to them. Apparently a lot of people are of the same mind. They were tight and from 500 feet looked pretty good, especially the guy (or dot) in the white jacket.

I had a far better view of the Dinosaur BBQ ribs.

Better September

The injuries are over and the winning ways begin again. There is time but not much chance given the quality ahead of the Sox.

And I have to admit a moment of weakness. I bought a Mets hat. Not like a fitted one or anything. Did you know that the Mets colours are a mix of the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers? The Mets are losing a few, too, now. But when you are 15 games up who cares. I suspect it is the Detroit Red Wings glide to the playoffs we are witnessing.

You are aware that Julio Franco is now 48 years and 14 days old, right? I bought a car sticker, too. And one for the Sox as well. The guy at the counter gave me the “…and exactly how do you explain this?” look.

They Blog!

Who knew? Dynamic and an honest name, too: Plenty of Nothing. A stark, disconcerting absence of baseball related yappetry to date, though someone is reading Koppett.

Entirely Unrelated Update: This is today’s task.

Not Entirely Unrelated To The Entirely Unrelated Update Update: It is a 1957 Eagle NHL “Pro” Official Hockey game. But toy acquisition policy #357 says non-slot-hockey rod-hockey is to be decorative given the familiarity and expectations resulting from the 1960s slot-hockey rod-hockey break-through. Be prepared to admit your weakness if you follow this link.

Friday Chat, Bad Day Chat

I can hear them even now – whiff, whiff, whiff. The sound of my new back to school cords, junior high late 70s. Crisp now, they would weigh me down in that cold October rain waiting for the bus, absorbing like a new sponge technology. This is the first bad day in the calendar since February. Mellow fruitfulness? HAH!

  • Here’s a bit of what I lost when I was taken to school as a kid. My access to Uncle Bobby and his ilk. I always thought that Bibmo the Birthday clown was freakish and the Mars landing quality picture of him under that link does nothing to help his cause.
  • Remember when Scotland always won at soccer? And by the way, that blown catch at Fenway by Rios the Blue Jay last night was the funniest thing I have seen in months.
  • I now like the Foo Fighters even more because it what you want to listen to when you are down under down under:

    The men were stuck in a Tasmanian mine when it collapsed in May, and passed the time listening to the Foo Fighters on MP3 players handed to them. Grohl said he would meet the two when the band tour Australia in November. “I’m not just having one beer with those dudes – we’re going for it,” he told the country’s ABC radio. “This is going to be a big night.”

    I have always thought that the mining disaster survivior population would be a nautral fit for rock star adoration.

  • Big doings with our forces in Afganistan who are going to take a province, Panjwaii, back soon. It is an example of how the Taliban are not terrorists or really even insurgents if this quote is correct:

    One Afghan leader from the area said NATO is in for a tough fight that won’t end once troops move in. He said the alliance should attempt some form of reconciliation with local militants. Haji Agha Lalai, the chief Panjwaii district elder who was chased out of his village by Taliban, said the insurgents have infiltrated every aspect of life there. “They own shops, they own homes there, they will not retreat,” Mr. Lalai predicted. “There are many types of Taliban, but these are the warriors. They have been told to fight and they will fight.”

    Whatever they are, they are nasty pieces of work and as will be actually capturing a large area from them and holding it. This is the area where Canadian troops killed 72 Taliban soldiers a few weeks ago after they ambushed an ambush.

  • Interesting to note that King for a bit more Ralph admits the Alberta boom was in fact unexpected, unprepared for, caused by a shift in a natural resource and is causing economic problems like local inflation and the inability to get projects off the ground due to shortgages. Interesting given those who say it was through hard work and conservative economic principles even though the same hardwork and conservative economic principles applies and have applied to most of the rest of the country for the last decade and a half.
  • I have been spending an inordinate amount of time at the Cooperstown Ballcap Co. . Their research prowess is phenomenal. Check out the cap for “BANANA WORKERS, 1935”.

So there you are. Enjoy the last real day of summer. A prize to the first person who spots some one else at work and an extra prize if that person is actually conscious.

God’s Hand

It was interesting to read these words in a Martin O’Malley bit hidden on CBC.ca somewhere quoting the Colorado Rockies Manager of all people:

“You look at things that have happened to us this year. You look at some of the moves we made and didn’t make. You look at some of the games we’re winning. Those aren’t just a coincidence. God has definitely had a hand in this.”

He meant it in a good way. Languishing as they are now at .429, does Satan now get the credit? Separate from the entirely sensible personal faith decisions of the players¹, just as with each of us, the larger role of the Christian pantheon and the sports-related religiousity of the fan’s expectation of outcome has never been very clear to me. Where stand the Cherubim, for example? Do they hover, guiding the bunted ball this way or that way along the third-base line? Why does Jesus not guide the hand of the child at catcher in the picture, too?

It was interesting to consider that quote and the statuette in light of the total collapse of the Red Sox that has gone from just bad pitching to something far worse. David Ortiz, the team’s star designated hitter, appears to be suffered from rapid heartbeat. Manny Ramirez also was out with knee problems and has missed his fifth start in seven games. That is in addition to the fact that “Doug Mirabelli (left ankle) and Wily Mo Pena (left wrist) are still day-to-day. Jason Varitek, Trot Nixon and Alex Gonzalez are all on the disabled list.” That is basically 2/3s of the team other than the pitching. And the pitching is not doing that well – which is a very polite way of putting it. Yet He abides with us.

But even with all that abiding – what do you make of a month like this? The World Series is a long way away but I seem to recall thinking that one was enough. I had made that pact before it happened, a little prayer. Was it me?

¹ One cannot but be impressed, for example, by Wakefield’s good works in the community or Timlin’s calm strength on the mound even as they may be dealing with the end of their best pitching years.

Start Your Christmas Shopping Now

Care of a kind word from a co-worker, I learned that the LCBO Vintages folk released 375 ml bottles of Lustau East India Sherry on Saturday. As I know my mother does not read this blog…or the internet at all ¹…I know I am safe to admit this is her stash for wee cakes and scones and after a nice bit of lamb and with a wee bit of blue cheese and beside a dish of trifle…and before and after a nap. Here is a review from one wine site’s review of the Lustau range as well as one from a wine blog. Note: “A blend of Soleras averaging 15 to 50 years of age.” Yum! Wee whisps of the 1950s in the glass.

¹’cause onywin tha’ dae is gang tae Scots Prrrrresbyterrrrian HELLLLLLL!