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or does the design of mccain’s political propaganda resemble the label of mccain potato products just a bit too much?

regardless, every time i see one of his ads, i wind up with a craving for fries.

my penchant for reading newsweek on the can inspires a political rant.  read it at quiblit.com.

here we see the infant blissfully engaged in its natural habitat (the living room)…

wait, it’s spotted our camera man….

oh god! it’s going after him!

run! for god’s sake man, run while you can! it’s about to pounce!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

while the loss of our cameraman is tragic, just look at that magnificent beast…

time for baby pictures!  [grin]

even if you aren’t a boston (or new york) fan, if you follow baseball, you’ve probably heard about the highly amusing hijinks at the still-under-construction yankee stadium.  that is, that a construction worker and red sox fan buried a sox jersey in the cement of the visitor’s dugout, in hopes of cursing those damn yankees.  frankly, hilarious.

the initial, offical response was: “so what, we don’t believe in curses”.  sensible, since, despite its long and charming history in the sport, superstition is, well, superstitious.  on sunday, however, they reverted to a “better safe than sorry” philosphy and dug the jersey up.  thus making the prank even more hilarious.

now, though, it seems the yanks are taking this thing way too seriously, in that they are considering criminal charges against the guy who buried the jersey.  beyond being petty and vindictive, this also implies they really do believe the whole curse thing.  again, hilarious.

look, there aren’t any curses in baseball.  the “curse of the bambino” was made up by dan shaughnessy.  after all, why would babe ruth be so pissed at boston for trading him to new york (where he was actually paid what he thought he was worth and became damn famous and developed into the greatest ball player in history) that he’d curse the sox to never win the world series again until they did?  eighty-six years is rather arbitrary, don’t you think?  no, the actual curse of the bambino is this: bad trades and signings will fuck you over.  the cubs “curse of the billy goat”?  c’mon, it’s the cubs.  hell, they hadn’t won the series for nearly 40 years by the time that curse came around.  and the lesson from that is simply this: don’t let people bring farm animals to the ballpark in the first place.  these “curses” are brought to us by the same people who can’t seem to counter sabermetric bloggers with anything beyond anti-intellectual rants and cliches about nerds, basements and never watching games.  these are the same people who would rather have a scrappy, hustling david eckstein on their team, than a lazy, distracted manny ramirez.  despite the fact that manny’s worst season in a decade (last year) was still better than most player’s career bests.  the same folks who think being able to steal a base is more important than being able to get on base, despite the painfully obvious fact that you can’t steal second if you can’t get to first.  and so on.

there are no curses.  not if you don’t give them any credence.  the yanks have just done so and it’s funny as hell.  play ball!

so, back in Oct., i got pulled over.  given that i happened to have expired tags, i suppose it was bound to happen eventually.  unfortunately, i also discovered that, despite having a CT license that was to expire in 2010, my having lived in MD for more than 2 months meant i was, in the eyes of the law, unlicensed.  unlike the expired tags, i couldn’t just pay the fine and be done with it either.  no, it was an “arrestable offense”, so i had to go to traffic court.  which i finally did, last friday.  a mere 5 and 1/2 months after getting pulled over.

the day was spent, well, waiting around.  i wound up in the 1pm slot, so the morning was spent in the library (for lack of better places to wait).  checked in with the prosecuter, ready to plead my case (lawyerless as i was) and was simply asked if i’d gotten my license.  yep.  handed it to the prosecuter; she handed it to a cop to verify it wasn’t a fake.  okay, we’ll dismiss the charges, please sit down till your case is called.  which i did.  went up before the judge, charges were dropped, baliff gave me a print out saying so.  all in all, it took a whole of 5 minutes.

 now, i’m not complaining that i didn’t get fined or have to go to jail.  but, really, it was a waste of time.  not just my time, but the prosecuter’s time and the judge’s time.  and the time of everyone else in court that day.  if all they care about is me getting my damn license, shouldn’t there be a way to just prove it without going to trial?  like, when i actually got it at DMV, couldn’t they automatically send a note to the state attorney’s office, and have the charges dismissed without having to actually go to court?  seems like it would be more efficient.  and i wouldn’t have burned a vacation day.  just a thought.

lamb is the traditional choice for easter dinner, and i’m all about tradition (despite the whole atheism thing).  mostly because i happen to love lamb.  also, perse balked at my suggestion of serving rabbit, stuffed with hard-boiled eggs.  when you think about it though, why is lamb traditional?  well, jesus was the lamb of god, so naturally when celebrating the merging of his ressurection with that of pagan fertility rites and various other spring ressurection myths, it makes sense to symbolically eat jesus.  because, as with the whole communion thing, christianity is all about cannibalism.Â

we liked it.

A Murder of Crows

An empty field calls them
and echoes of their calls.
Too few now come
to council and lament
their father’s father’s
days, when fields ran wet
with slaughter and corn.

Too few.  The young
forget, as youth demands,
and time.  They follow
the road and sing no more
amongst the scattered grain.

Too few.  The caws
fall silent as the old
take wing and the sky,
once black, shades grey.

a brief write up of one of the raku firings i participated in: only at quiblit.com