If you’re a Red Sox fan who’s wondering why the hell Mark Bellhorn is on the team, this article may help. His unintentional walk percentage is tenth in MLB; if he could hit, he’d be dangerous. Doesn’t make him a starter (unless, say, Nomar’s on the DL) but it explains why he’s out there right now.
Author: Bryant
It turns out that the Subservient Chicken was created by the Barbarian Group, a Boston-area Web design group. I note this mostly as an excuse to link to another site they did for my brother’s design collective, Release1.
The 2004 Hugo nominees are out. I have very little opinion. I do find it interesting to compare them to the Nebula nominees, insofar as the Nebula nominees include quite a few stories originally published online.
Another Disney photo, perhaps bearing a certain weight of cognitive dissonance for my Unknown USA brothers and sisters.
Hey, look: the Mouse is attempting to reroute the ley lines to the Fountain of Youth! Someone’s gotta stop ‘em.
The rumor is that this is Owen Wilson.
“My life is boring and not worth writing about, except for my knowledge of one thing. So this blog will focus on that thing. It is, for lack of a better word, celebrity. I stumbled onto it by a series of chance events. Suffice it to say, I can tell you what it’s like to see your picture on the magazine rack every now and again when you pay for groceries. And that’ll have to suffice. I’d like this to be the sort of account afforded only by anonymity. And it that happens, if my identity were revealed, I’d quickly be selling grapefruits — instead of paying $14 a pop to eat them — on Sunset Blvd.”
Maybe, although the paranoia of exposure seems a little overwritten. But what do I know about being a celebrity? More to the point, do I really care as long as I can pretend that the gory details of Hollywood life are true?
“Recently, though, a producer I’ve worked with and seven Industry buds of his flew their own private jet from LA to Havana for a day of mojitas, Cohibas and sixteen-year-old whores, and, upon their return, were each fined $25,000, for no other reason than their hubris. For the producer, this is Tooth-Fairy money, and a small price to be hailed as a bad ass. I should note that my cleaning lady, who’s small enough to be turned away from the more perilous amusement park rides, could kick his ass.”
I don’t care if it’s fiction as long as it’s amusing.
Ah, the Disney experience:
It’s wholesome! The photo is from the Adventurer’s Club, which is a 1930s pulp-themed bar on Pleasure Island. The gimmick is the actors playing parts, who do skits and shows and songs (see picture) throughout the evening. I spent a lot of time there last week.
Excellent second to last episode of The Apprentice tonight. I’m already looking forward to the next season, when competitors will know the format better. There wasn’t a lot of metagaming in this season, and that’s got to be partially due to the lack of information about the full rules. Next year, contestants will know that they’ll see their fired peers again, and they’ll know that they can keep allies on their team safe even when it gets down to three people per team. More important, they’ll be more confident about the twists.
I also enjoyed the interviews, and wouldn’t have minded watching more of them. There’s no question but that this episode demanded a completely different set of skills than previous contests. In particular, Amy’s lack of substance showed up in a big way. Given what Trump’s looking for, it’s going to be very clear who has no chance next year.
I liked Kwame’s tactic of hiring his old team, since they weren’t as ego-ridden as Versacorp. Most of Bill’s people were pretty clearly unhappy about losing. Of course, Omarosa’s screw-ups may have blown that tactic. Albeit… he picked second, so he was going to wind up with Omarosa no matter what. So the real question is whether giving Omarosa a little egoboo was worth not picking Nick. And I think it was; Nick was showing some serious attitude at Bill. So since Kwame was going to get Omarosa no matter what, he was smart to get Heidi over Nick.
Now, why Bill would choose both Nick and Amy is beyond me.
Glenn Reynolds finds the differences between the popular reaction to Senator Chris Dodd’s statements and the popular reaction to Senator Trent Lott’s statements "particularly disturbing." I’m not entirely sure why, as the two cases aren’t all that similar beyond the initial foolhardy statements.
OK, OK, I am sure why. There’s a rapidly spreading meme which makes Lott look a lot better, and it goes like this: “Lott suffered for saying nice things about Strom Thurmond.” There’re also a lot of right-wingers who don’t know why Senator Robert Byrd, former KKK member, gets a free pass for his history. There are times when I’m not sure either, just like I wasn’t sure why Strom Thurmond got a free pass.
Anyhow, the assertion that Lott got in trouble for simply praising Strom Thurmond is blatantly untrue. Lott got into trouble a) for saying nice things about Thurmond’s segregationist past, followed by b) revelations about his association with the Council of Conservative Citizens, c) the discovery of his racially-inflected interview with Southern Partisan; and d) relevations about his efforts to keep blacks out of his college fraternity. Lott turned out to be a long-time associate and friend of white supremacists. That’s why he’s not Senate Majority Leader anymore.
Dodd’s comments were dumb and he should issue an apology immediately. However, you can’t really compare the two situations unless Chris Dodd proves to have fairly recent ties to the KKK or other white supremacist groups. If he does, the two situations are comparable. Otherwise — not quite.
Well, this is an alarming new trend. That’s a total of thirteen foreigners kidnapped in Iraq in the last week or so. Hopefully it’s coincidence rather than a concerted effort, and hopefully everyone kidnapped will make it through the ordeal.
The victims include Christian evangelists, journalists, and human-rights workers. Doesn’t look like any common thread except that they’re foreign.
Ten years ago, the Rwandan genocide began. On April 6th, 1994, Juvenal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda, was killed when his plane was shot down. On April 7th, the Hutu militia began slaughtering Tutsis. Over the course of the next three months, approximately 800,000 Tutsis were killed.
The West, including the United States, did very little to prevent this.