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Cubs 2008

Just to follow up and close the loop, the Cubs did not win the world series.

Cubs 2007

With six games left in the season the Cubs are three games up on Milwaukee and playing some of the best baseball of their season. This is the kind of excitement a Yankees fan will never experience. Even Boston can never feel this way again. This is the kind of thing a Cubs fan and only a Cubs fan can feel. Let's hope I'm still saying these sorts of things a month from now.

sigh

I absolutely hate hate hate that the biggest story in sports this weekend has been Michigan losing.

go cubs.

Online Girlfriends

I was talking to some people at work today about how I used to write for the DO and about how I wrote a few columns for the paper. I pulled a couple of them up and read them again and dammit I make myself laugh. It had been a few years since I read these. I thought I'd share one. If nothing else, this post will bump the "FUCK YOU INTERNET EXPLORER" post off my iGoogle RSS feed once and for all. That is unless IE pisses Jon off again to the point he feels the need to curse software. Enjoy!

]]> ONLINE GIRLFRIENDS ARE BETTER

You might think that online girlfriends are reserved for white trash men who drive El Caminos. Computer science majors in college, perhaps. Well I am here to dispel that evil rumor. The truth is, online girlfriends are far superior to real girlfriends in many ways. It all comes down to one simple elucidation: Wreak the benefits of a girlfriend without dealing with the negatives. In essence, it’s the perfect marriage between want and not needed.

The most obvious benefit to an online girlfriend is the revolutionized sexual encounters. If you are like me, sex with a real girlfriend is very much like a game of one-on-one freeze tag; she is frozen in place in an awkward lunge like position while you run around until you’re too exhausted to continue. Then you swap. With the somewhat impersonal exchange over a computer, you will find that a girl’s inhibition will be severely narrowed. This will allow her to say the things you’ve always wanted a girl to say to you. You’d be surprised with the kind of immoral and foul things girls will think of and type, but not say. Masturbation is a very adequate substitute to sex, and after you’re done, you can just pull up your boxer shorts and go to bed without the worry of leaving a fuck stain on the sheets. Who’s going to yell at you in the morning?

Chances are your online girlfriend is fat and disfigured. Attractive hard bodies don’t sit around at 11:30 on a Friday night checking the away messages of her friends. No, she’s out getting date raped at the local college bar. What you need is the kind of girl that is going to be there when you need her; the kind of girl whose idea of a fun weekend night is baking cookies and watching Sixteen Candles or (insert any cheesy 80’s movie here) with her other fat, loser friends. When you talk to her, she’ll be happy to spend the time with you, but you won’t have to put up with the nagging, monotonous banter that you do with a real girl. If things get too boring you simply say your computer is acting up and you sign off. No hard feelings; none on your end at least.

This, however, is assuming you are lucky enough to find that needle in a haystack and actually talk to a girl. Chances are, you’re talking to a man. Most likely a man very much like you, such that if you were to meet him in real life, you two would probably end up becoming very good friends. But, as fate would have it, you met this way which isn’t all bad. As far as men disguising themselves as women, the outlook you should have is one of indifference as long as they talk dirty and make themselves sound attractive. Other than that, it is beyond the male brain to be able to distinguish a man and a woman based on words alone. You might think I’m wrong but I’ve conducted many tests and have put myself through rigorous research experiments and have found that you never knew I was a man.

Sure, you lose the intimacy and the pillow talk, but you don’t have to put up with her dad always threatening you with violence. You don’t have to put up with annoying restraining orders and police ordinances. You can have more time to yourself and do the things you want to do without having to worry about someone else’s feelings. And no matter what they say, no man ever wants to put up with a woman’s feelings; unless he’s really horny.

Tokyo Drift

On a serious note, Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is a sweet movie. I’m not much of a car buff - shit, I can’t even change my own oil, but something about this movie makes me watch it every damn time it’s on HBO. Wait, I think it’s because it’s not about cars really. Yeah, there are races and shit, but the technical details about the cars aren’t really explored, and instead we see cool-looking cars and hot-ass Japanese chicks. I totally messed up when I was out there (Japan) – I was preoccupied with seeing shrines when I should have been trying to hang out with the Japanese model-chicks that were in the movie.
The characters in the movie are surprisingly interesting, and I think this is what really attracts me. We have Sean, Neela, and Han, all of whom are gaijins, Japanese for outsiders. This shared outsider status enables these characters to confide in one another, and this results in some interesting dialogue. One of my favorite scenes is when Han, the Korean rich-kid with an endless number of cars on hand, tells Sean, the good-natured Alabaman, that he wittingly let him wreck his car to test his character. Sean promises to pay back Han, and commits himself to learn the Japanese art of Drifting so he can eventually win races on Han’s behalf. Han is particularly concerned with the company he keeps, and goes on to tell Sean that he values trust and character, and if he had to sacrifice an expensive car to test a man’s character, then so be it. This is some metaphysical shit for a movie w/ Bow Wow as a major character! The mentor-mentee relationship between Sean and Han is particularly endearing; it’s a nice complement to the action sequences and the scenes with hot-ass Japanese chicks grinding to a catchy, yet crappy Cam’ron song.

ADD?

I can't even manage to dedicate 5 minutes out of my day to collect my thoughts and document them on this blog that Jon spent a great deal of tme setting up. If I can't even manage to do that, just imagine dedicating ten or more hours a day to work!

FUCK YOU INTERNET EXPLORER

A "Table Object Model" that supercedes the DOM? Microsoft, web pages shouldn't have run time errors, and you've just lost another one to Macintosh.

EDIT.
FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK
It wouldn't matter because I don't even like to use tables but I had to for this particular project because INTERNET EXPLORER doesn't render floated divs correctly in animations.

I want my 3 days back Microsoft.

The Perry Bible Fellowship

I've written here about Nicholas Gurewitch before. There's a pretty sweet interview with him on publishersweekly.com. You should read it. Also, the first collection, or "book," of The Perry Bible Fellowship will be published in September. It'll be called The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories: A Collection of the Comic Strips of The Perry Bible Fellowship. It's a good bet that the book won't include any stories about a trial of Colonel Sweeto or any other colonels. For that matter, it's also a good bet that the book won't include any mentions of a bible fellowship either.

Kerry Wood

Despite a very concentrated attempt to not hope for Kerry Wood to be healthy this season, and to simply be content with the Cubs' bullpen as it is without him, I'm having a difficult time not being disappointed by the news that Wood will start this season on the DL, again, with shoulder problems, again. Fair enough. I'm over it. Oh wait, Mark Prior is going to start on the DL, too? You're not making it easy for me, but okay. The Cubs still have Carlos Zambrano. For this season at least. Fuck. This sucks.

The point of this, though, is to point out some humorus headlines from 1998 which I found in another blog (blogs referencing blogs... what have we become?) called What's Goin On?, a Chicago Sports Blog. Before the funny part, let me set this up just a bit for you non-Cub fans. 1998 was Kerry Wood's rookie season with the Cubs. In his fifth major league start, he struck out 20 Houston Astros which was at the time - and probably still is - a major league record for the most K's in a game. Wood, when healthy (ha!), does have an amazing slider. It starts at the knees, then it's up at the chest, and then its almost in the dirt by the time it crosses the plate. Of course, that kind of hook puts such a strain on your elbow and shoulder that after throwing that pitch for three seasons, you end up on the disabled list eleven times in ten seasons. Anyhoo... Here's a portion of the afore mentioned blog that made me laugh.

After reading this morning that Wood is making his 11th trip to the disabled list before his 10th season starts, I decided to take a look at some of the Tribune headlines in the following days and weeks after Wood made the Killer B's look like mere gnats. Try not to laugh:
• Legends in passing: Mr. Jordan, meet Mr. Wood
• Imagine, baseball upstaging Michael
• Wood, Clemens have a few other things in common
• Everything seems to be turning out right for Wood
• When Cooperstown calls, will Wood still be a Cub?

That last one is my favorite. I remember Cubs fans everywhere being terrified that Kid K would follow in the footsteps of Greg Maddux and head off to Atlanta. In fact, a Sox fan friend of mine started cracking Braves jokes the very next day.

I like how he said "Try not to laugh." Yes. Try.

Bracket Busted

I'm actually doing alright with my brackets this year, but I think filling them out takes the fun out of the tournament...for me. I'm a pretty big college basketball fan; I know so many useless things about the sport that of all people, I should do well in NCAA pools. For example, I know that UNLV's point-guard, Kevin Kruger, is the son of UNLV's coach, Lon Kruger, and is actually a post-grad at the school. He graduated from Arizona State University, but only used three years of eligibility, and under a short-lived NCAA rule was eligible to play at UNLV w/o having to sit out a year as is the case with transfer students.

The quest to be right causes me to become upset when my picks bow out of the tournament, even if I have no attachment to the team. I picked Texas to go to the final four, but they were man-handled by USC. Having seen USC play a few time this year I was kind of pulling for them to do well, but to the detriment of my bracket. One can become quite conflicted by these things. So instead of enjoying a great performance by a team I like, I'm left bitching about my bracket. The tournament should be fun to watch, right?

And I'm not even driven by the possibility of winning money or a material item, I just want to be right. That said, no bracket for me next year.....or maybe I'll just fill one out and not submit.

In pacman

197 thousand points
You know, you eat those ghosts by getting the big dots... they're blue for a while, then they blink five times and then they go back to normal.
In the very late rounds, they start blicking as soon as you get that dot
Then the next round they blink immediately, but only 4 times
Then 3, 2, 1, and then around level 15 or 16, you get that big dot and they don't blink. suddenly, you can't eat the ghosts. if i was prepared for that, i think i could have broken 200k.
Next time.

thank you

Thank you, pregnant woman, for being pregnant and looking healthy and making me feel good.

park avenue

I'm sitting here in a cab on park avenue in the rain, headed downtown to dinner. Looking out the window, I remembered something I did about a year ago that was so euphoric; something I'd recommend everyone do. Drive down park avenue in a convertable at night. The way the lights on the met life building creep toward you - awesome. .

learn to digg

No one who needs help will ever read this, but I just wanted to complain about people who digg down comments and then respond to them. This forces me to search through the page and find the aforementioned comment and then expand it to see the context. You shouldn't digg comments down because you disagree, but rather because they are not germane.

PANDORA.COM

I really enjoy using Pandora to listen to music. But lets face it, sometimes it plays shitty songs and you can only click the skip button 5 or 6 times per station in the span of an hour. Oooh Oooh Sophie B Hawkins just came on.

Anyway...

You can get around this limitation by clicking on another station and then right back to the station you were on - you don't even have to wait until the song loads. A stations playlist always advances by one song when you open a station.

I hope they don't wise up to this...though It could be done on purpose.