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i don’t understand anymore. 

lose a bid for the olympic games to come to chicago = hooray! 

win the nobel peace prize = this is terrible!

what the fuck?  seriously, i don’t understand anymore.  not that certain lunatics hold idiotic opinions like this.  more that such blatherings are picked by the media and treated as valid, rational and representative of public opinion. 

times like this, repeatingly banging my head against a brick wall seems the only sensible thing to do.

likely i’ve mentioned my loathing of politics before.  still, one cannot escape it, since nearly every medium blares the godawful stuff at you constantly.  mind you, that is one of the reasons for my loathing.  another would be the oxymoronic lunacy that shat itself onto my tv last night, in the form of a paid political advertisment (for some silly PAC, as far as i could tell).  i have this annoying habit of paying attention to what people say, even if it is a commerical.  what these people were saying (via a bad actress dressed as a doctor) was stupid.  they are against health care reform and spewed forth the typical talking points about government rationing of care (cause insurance companies don’t) and fabrications about existing systems of socialized medicine (ie: canadians wait up to a year for “vital” surgeries, if, by “vital”, you mean “elective, non-emergency” surgery.  and by “a year” you mean “about 2 months”).  what really got me, though, was the take-away message: don’t let the goverment get between you and your doctor [by reforming health care to include a public option], tell your congressperson to focus on funding medicare.  i’ll let that sink in a bit, before the befuddled “what the fuck?”.

 i’ll admit to be a regionalist.  frankly, i consider the northeast too intelligent for this crap to fly here.  apparently i think too highly of my fellow new englanders. 

back to the message.  i just don’t understand how groups like this think.  what are they trying to say?  no government run health care, except for the elderly?  it makes my brain hurt, to try and unravel the madness.  now, my understanding of a public healthcare option might be off, but it is just that: an option.  the government sets basic criteria for insurance plans (which, um they already regulate), offers a public plan that is the baseline and people have the option to choose the public plan or a private plan.  i know the fear: it will put private companies out of business.  kind of like how public universities have done away with private ones (wait, they haven’t?). 

 well, so fucking what?  hey, i work for an insurance company (not health insurance, but insurance nonetheless).  they exist to make money by investing your premiums.  insurance is a hedged bet, particularly health and property/casualty insurance.  term life insurance too.  you pay to have coverage in case something bad happens.  the more likely it is that something bad (sickness, car accident, etc.) and covered will actually befall you, the more you are going to have to pay.  if a company feels you probably won’t ever make a claim, they are fine with charging you lower premiums.  lower risk, after all.  the ideal form of the business model is that people pay for insurance and never make a claim.   the goal is to avoid paying out.  this is something we should strive to preserve…why, again?  consider, if you will, what happens if insurance companies don’t make money off a particular form of coverage.  flood damage, for instance.  homeowners insurance never covers it.  you have to buy government flood insurance.  why?  because the risk is too high for insurance companies to want to cover it.  no profit in it.  why, again, would we want to make sure these companies thrive?

the whole thing makes me angry.  like education and dependable public transportaion, health is something we should consider part of the nation’s infrastructure.  i’m not a fan of having to pay taxes, but since i have to, the things i want them spent on are making sure everyone can get an education (free, up to a bachelors, if they desire), get to where they need to and receive the care they need to stay healthy.  maybe thinking the government should provide the baseline for these things makes me a socialist.  so be it.  public versions of education and transportation haven’t eliminated private versions.  i see no reason why the same shouldn’t hold true for health care.

folks, this is what happens when you decide “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” in regards to keeping your damn software up-to-date.  when it does finally break, nearly a decade and a half later, no one can fix it.  why?  because you have a vendor app that was written with Borland C++ 4.5, and i can’t get my hands on that to create a debug version of the exe, that’s why.  and XP doesn’t want to let a 16-bit windows debugger run (there is probably a workaround for that, but dear fucking god!  you’re still using a 16-bit system!). 

honestly, we even keep the damn cobol on the back end at the current version, and that language used to use punch cards.  not to mention that it pre-dates, well, me.  but no.  i’m stuck supporting your shitty little system and learning all about obsolete versions of languages, since you never saw fit to upgrade from FoxPro 2.6a and your app apparently uses Clipper to read dBase III tables.  it’s not even comprable to learning latin; i’m learning etruscian instead.

i’d smack whomever is responsible for this system never being upgraded or having the business moved to a different system.  but i don’t know who they are and i suspect they are in iowa.

well folks, the winter trade meetings are set to begin soon for baseball, and for those of you who haven’t been following the hot stove news, johan santana might be available.  as a result, perhaps in sorrow and lamentation, it seems someone has dumped a shitload of acid into the water supply for the twin cities.  why, you may wonder, would i think that?  because the good folks at firejoemorgan kindly directed me to this bit of sheer lunacy.

now, if you don’t know much about baseball, i’ll tell you why this is such a horribly, horribly, horribly bad trade.  here’s the proposed trade:

twins give:

• johan santana (very good lefty, free agent in 2008)
• joe nathan (good closer, but 33, free agent in 2008)
• carlos silva (um, filed for free agency already, so they can’t actually trade him)

sox give:

• jacoby ellsbury (potentially great center fielder)
• dustin pedroia (AL rookie of the year)
• jon lester (good 4/5 slot lefty)
• jonathan papelbon (great closer, better than nathan, also only 27)
• clay bucholz (pitched a no-hitter in his second MLB game, could be fantastic)

 so, for one year of santana, one year of nathan and no years of silva, the sox should, uh, trade 5 of their best young players, all of whom have had success in the majors?  and the writer of this article wonders why the twins GM hasn’t gotten this deal done?  um, cause it has as much chance of happening as i have of flying to the moon by flapping my arms rapidly?  perhaps that might be why.  what’s sad is that, despite this being on the “drunken call in to sports radio” level of trade ideas, this man was paid to produce this.  god help us all.

for insanity.  apparently, the firm that recruits australian santa clauses has recommened their santas to say “ha, ha, ha”, instead of “ho, ho, ho”.  why, you may ask?  because, it seems “ho, ho, ho” may be offensive to women.  i’ll give you a moment to compose yourself after the fit of laughter that’s just wracked you.

the reasoning is fairly typical of these sorts of things:  “ho” is an american (though not australian, and remember, we are talking about events in sydney) slang term for whore.  since we all know that context has absolutely no bearing, whatsoever, upon the meaning of a word.  particularly homonyms.  for instance, if one walks into a hardware store and asks to buy a hoe, it is absurdly obvious they are looking for a prostitute.  it is obvious, then, that allowing santas to loudly proclaim that all women walking past are whores is unexceptable.

or it could just, maybe, possibly, be yet another example of ridculously sensitive overreaction.  what worries me though, is all too often crap like this occurs because someone made a complaint.  i can only imagine so woman tracking down the mall santa’s boss:

woman: “sir, i’d like to make a complaint about santa.”
boss santa: “yes, what happened?”
woman: “well, i was walking through the mall, minding my own business, when i heard someone call me a ho! i looked, and it was santa! i was going to ignore it, but then he called me a ho again! and then, wouldn’t you know, the fat bastard called me a ho a third time! i want him fired.”
boss santa: [blinks, incredulously]
woman: “or i’ll sue.”
boss santa: “er, yes, we’ll take care of that. have a merry christmas…ho, ho, ho!”
woman: “you fucking bastard, i’m not a ho!”

yes, it’s a scary world we live in folks. just remember, when you gather round the tofurkey next thursday, that the pilgrims were genocidal cultists! in fact, remind your family of that just before tucking into eat. it’ll put everyone in the true holiday spirit.

it’s not condo fees.  it’s not having no yard.  it’s not even the petty jackasses who pettition management to have your car towed cause they think your back seat is too dirty.

no, it’s that it’s 72°F outside right now.  at 1 in the fucking am.  and i’m in shorts, sweating.  why?  because the dimwits have never heard of weather forecasts, and switched the AC to heat last week.  seriously, i know that highs in the 80s is not normal for october.  but that’s what the past week has been.  right now it’s humid, hot and sticky.  i feel like i’m in florida.   with no AC.

granted, roasting a chicken tonight probably didn’t help matters, heatwise.  but that’s beside the point.  it’s still bloody hot.

i’m not much of a football fan.  don’t watch games; only occassionally check the scores.  however, the “scandal” in which the pats are currently embroiled has been hard to miss.  personally, i think it’s a rather minor infraction of the rules (this also seems to be the majority opinion amongst fans).  gregg easterbrook (aka TMQ) thinks otherwise.  in fact, in an article bursting with sheer lunacy, he claims it as a potential death knell for the NFL.

let’s examine, shall we?

first, we get this either either extraordinarily hyperbolic or extraordinarily naive proclaimation:

“…the NFL is on the precipice of blowing its status as the country’s favorite sport. The whole NFL enterprise is in jeopardy from that single word: cheating. It’s the most distasteful word in sports. And now the Patriots have brought the word into the NFL.”,

yep, that’s right folks. the patriots are the first NFL team to cheat, ever! apparently steroids and HGH don’t count as cheating. or, count only as individual cheating, not team cheating. whatever. a reminder: all professional atheletes and teams will do whatever they can to win, including cheating. and continue to do so until they get caught.

but wait, there’s more! TMQ also compares bill belichick, a football coach, to nixon, a former us president!

“It seems more than just an eerie coincidence that Belichick’s unethical behavior involves illicit taping, the same offense that made Nixon’s actions so sordid. The parallels to Nixon don’t stop there. Caught, Belichick – like Nixon – tried to hide the true extent of the prohibited acts; Belichick – like Nixon – tried to claim his prohibited action hadn’t been prohibited; Belichick – like Nixon – immediately stonewalled. It would be tempting to break the unhappy tone of this column with a Nixon joke – when the league plays Belichick’s tape of the Jets’ sideline, will there be an 18-and-a-half minute gap? But for all lovers of the NFL, there’s just nothing to laugh about now.”

shall we remind everyone that belichick broke the rules of a game and that nixon broke the laws of the country he was supposed to be governing? really, is there any comparison? again, leader of a football team breaking rules of a game in order to win said game versus the president of a country breaking the laws he was elected to enforce.

it gets better. next, he claims michael vick copping a plea in federal court is dignified:

“Michael Vick tried to deny and stonewall, but at the last owned up and admitted what he did. That’s dignity. Belichick is now using weasel words to deny responsibility for his own choices. What kind of example does that set for the young?

does this even need explaination? whatever you want to say about dogfighting, admiting to it is not more dignified that half-admitting to stealing signs in a football game. one is a federal crime, the other is, again, against the rules of a game.

my favorite though, is this gem:

” Worst, did the Patriots cheat in their Super Bowl wins? If New England was cheating in the Super Bowl, this will become the darkest sports scandal since Shoeless Joe and the Black Sox.”

does gregg not remember that the black sox threw the world series, which they were favored to win, because they bet on the games? and thus purposefully lost in order to reap gambling profits? stealing signs in order to win the championship game, solely because you want to be the champions, tarnishes the game as much as throwing the game to make money and not caring whether you win or not? really? please enlighten me as to how these scenerios are not a few orders of magnitude apart on how much they cheapen the game.

really, there’s a whole lot of crazy in this article. and it’s only about stealing signs! something everyone does, just not always with videotape. thing is, had they just taken rapid stills and made them into a flip book, there would not have been a rule violation. fun, huh? obviously this will destroy the sport of football.

for those of us curious about what mysteries lie hid deep within the creation museum, but just not curious enough to actually bother going to it…behold! there is an answer. yes, a kindly young couple (with nifty cool t-shirts) went undercover for us, and present for all a photo-journalistic journey through the creation museum.

i find myself oddly disturbed, saddened and fascinated at the twisting attempts to turn evidence for evolutionary and plate tectonic theories into support for young earth creationism. and yet, they still can’t seem to escape observations such as this.

part of me wants to applaud their faith, yet i cannot. because it is a false faith. yes, i know faith is believing something to be true when you have no proof that it is. however, that does not equate to believing something to be true when it has been conclusively demonstrated to be false. to maintain such unwavering belief in falsehoods demeans what faith should truly be.

you know this guy?

New York Mets baseball fan Frank Martinez, 40, was ejected and then arrested at Shea Stadium in April after he allegedly shone a high-beam flashlight into the eyes of Atlanta Braves player Edgar Renteria during a game. A former neighbor, interviewed by the New York Post, said Martinez was once evicted from his apartment because he would commandeer the hallway after a Mets victory, and into the middle of the night, screaming “M! E! T! S!” as he paraded from one end to the other. [New York Post, 4-22-07] (swiped from news of the weird)

god bless baseball fans.