Category: Uncategorized

Nicest thing hes ever said

ESPN.com – MLB – Bonds denies receiving amphetamines from Sweeney

“He is both my teammate and my friend,” Bonds said in a statement. “He did not give me anything whatsoever and has nothing to do with this matter, contrary to recent reports.”I want to express my deepest apologies especially to Mark and his family as well as my other teammates, the San Francisco Giants organization and the fans,” he said.

After my recent post bashing Barry Bonds, I feel some obligation to show the other side, as well – he actually said the right thing for a change.  I obviously can’t attest to the sincerity of what he said, but I can at least say that this is the first time I’ve ever read a quote from him and thought, “Assuming he’s sincere, that was the right thing to say.”

Of course, you may argue that he wouldn’t have had to apologize if he had never a) taken amphetamines or b) blamed an innocent teammate for giving them to him.  And you’d be absolutely right.

The perfect commercial

There’s an Olive Garden commercial that I saw four times last night that got me thinking.  No, that commercial is not the perfect commercial.  That commercial sucks.  Although, I’m obviously not the target audience.  The commercial starts off with a woman coming into the Olive Garden saying she’s looking for her date.  She describes him as, “handsome, and his shoes are probably untied”.  At this point, off-screen a child calls, “Mom!”, and the mom and the hostess share a syrupy moment as it becomes obvious to all that the woman is having dinner with her husband and her son, and isn’t some divorced hussy on a blind date.

So, my idea starts off similarly.  It’s obviously a commercial for anti-bacterial kitchen wipes or healthy frozen dinners or something.  Just as we’re getting to the syrupy punchline moment, the director walks out yelling, “Cut!”.  The mom stops.

“This is the wrong commercial.  We shot for the female 35-55 demographic yesterday.  This is for the male 18-35!”  He says.

“Oh.”  Says the mom.  She pauses for a moment.  “Okay.  Should I take off my shirt?”

“Yes, that would be great.”  The director says.  “Someone get these kids out of here!”  He walks off screen and we see the mom start to pull her shirt over her head, and then the commercial cuts to the screen that shows the company name and website and whatnot.

The voice-over then comes on and says something like, “At blah-blah company, we know what our customers want.  And we work tirelessly to give it to you.”

This commercial has it all.  Syrup, humor, memorability, sex, self-referential “we joke about ourselves because we’re real people, just like you” stuff . . .  It’s perfect.  Someone needs to contact me about the rights to it.

Bonds is a druggie, CEO of MLB players association a liar

SI.com – MLB – Caught speeding – Thursday January 11, 2007 3:09AM

“I can say unequivocally in my 22 years I’ve known Barry Bonds he has never blamed anyone for anything.”

So says Gene Orza.  A quick Google search for “barry bonds blame” turns up this:

“I’m tired of my kids crying. You wanted me to jump off a bridge, I finally did,” Bonds told reporters Tuesday, shortly after returning to training camp. “You finally brought me and my family down. … So now go pick a different person.”

So, maybe Orza was exaggerating a little.  Why do people make statements like that when they must know them to be false?

Anyway, Bonds is a jerk.  I don’t care how many home runs he hits or what his career stats look like when he finally retires.  He has made himself the poster child of everything that’s wrong with Major League Baseball.  It would make me very happy if he doesn’t break Hank Aaron’s record because he’s in jail for perjury.  That would be too awesome.

Sir, youre going to have to remove your monkeys diaper for inspection

TSA: Service Animals

When the handler and monkey go through the WTMD and the WTMD alarms, both the handler and the monkey must undergo additional screening.

BoingBoing posted this today, but they didn’t quote this rule, which is quite possibly the funniest.  I mean, the nerve of the American public, thinking that they can set off alarms and allow their monkey to get off scot free.

“Sir, your monkey is going to have to step over here for further screening.”

It’s worth becoming disabled and getting a helper monkey just for the airport hilarity that this could cause.  Even better than wearing an “enemy combatant” t-shirt through the security line.

Restaurant week in DC

Wife and I are off to a fancy dinner tonight at Mendocino, booked through OpenTable. Can’t wait for some nice fish, maybe some organic wine . . .

I know you all are jealous.

Edit: Totally worth it. I’d highly recommend Mendocino. Dinner was great. Nice, small restaurant, good service, right in the heart of super-trendy Georgetown. Georgetown is actually so trendy that I don’t think it’s trendy anymore – it’s gone totally back around to only semi-cool.  The wife says, “Great company.  But I guess I can get that anywhere.  I would recommend the goat cheese cheesecake”.

Tag abuse

Some of you may know that I love Flickr.  I have about 1800 pictures up there.  Recently, I posted some pictures of Barb’s family watching a video on YouTube, and tagged it “youtube”, among other things.  It currently has 107 views, up from the normal 5-10 views on most of my pictures.

That got me thinking.  Is it “ethical” to drive traffic to your website by adding tags and search terms that don’t really apply?  The “youtube” tag was relevant to the picture, but I could have tagged it with all sorts of popular tags that don’t really apply.  Similarly, I could tag this blog post with “sex” or “hate Republicans” or whatever the kids are searching for these days, and drive more traffic.

Or, alternatively to adding tags that don’t really fit, what if I actually wrote about stuff based on current top Google searches?  It wouldn’t be hard to find out what  the week’s popular search terms are, and then I could write about those things.

Usually, I post about whatever I feel like posting about.  Sometimes that’s current events.  For example, I got some random traffic when I posted about Zidane’s head butt, and I got random traffic when I posted about the Enviga tea that some marketing guy sent me.  But often it’s not, like when I post about my stupid cat.

Anyway, I have no point, here.  I’m just wondering where the line is between offering content that people might find interesting and then trying to promote it, and prostituting one’s self for traffic.

Social shopping app?

Cribcandy – the household shopping blog. Daily picks of the best designed or most unusual finds, for your home link via BoingBoing This site probably requires a little more browsing before I understand where they’re going, but they seem to be trying to create a social web app for shopping. I’m not sure what value they expect to add, but the stuff they find for around the house is awesome. And it doesn’t seem to be all super expensive, unlike many sites that aggregate cool stuff.

Nice job, Cal

Baltimore Orioles : News : Baltimore Orioles News

“He proved that a tall man could play shortstop, enabling players like Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez to follow.”

Cal Ripken was just inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the first time he was on the ballot, with the third highest vote percentage ever.  Growing up in Maryland, following the Orioles ever since I was ten, it was a long time before I saw a live baseball game that he didn’t play in.  Well, not including my rec league games.  He got an honorary degree when my sister graduated from Johns Hopkins, and I walked past him at Preakness last summer.

I still remember coming home from work on September 6th, 1995, and watching him do his victory lap as he broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games streak.  I hadn’t really realized how much of a big deal it was until I saw that on tv.

I know that the exploits of a man who played a game for a living are pretty unimportant in a lot of ways, but in some other ways, they make a big difference to a lot of people.  There’s nothing quite like sitting in the bleachers on a sunny day, throwing peanut shells on the ground and watching a baseball game.  It doesn’t match the intensity of a lot of other sports, but there’s some magic there (I know, I’m being a little cheesy, sue me).

So, congratulations to Cal, and to also-deserving Tony Gwynn.

Id like a new layout

I’m tired of the way Complaint Hub looks.  I’ve just been over at Candy Blog, run by Nanowrimo big shot Cybele, and I really like the design.  It’s not what I’m looking for, but it fits her site really well.  And that’s what I want here – a design that fits my site.  Then the question becomes, what sort of a design is right for a blog about complaining?  I don’t know.  I’d like to do something myself, but WordPress uses PHP, and I have pretty limited PHP experience.  I suppose it would be good to learn.

Kids, dont try this at home

I just posted about how much I hate elevators, and how I can’t take the stairs up at work because they lock the doors.  Well, they just started leaving the doors unlocked.  So now I don’t have to wait for the elevator when I come back from getting coffee!  I still can’t walk up from the parking garage, but that’s an extra three floors – I don’t feel bad riding the elevator up six flights.

Now, kids, here’s how you can complain about both sides of an issue.  It requires a delicate amount of self-deprecation, a little poetic license, and a flexible moral compass.  With practice, you, too, can become a professional complainer.  You must learn to deal with the classic complainer’s Catch-22. The problem now is that I have to walk up the dang stairs, or else I can no longer be smug about those who ride the elevators.  I just started going to the gym again last week after a month and a half off, and thirty five minutes on the elliptical makes your legs tired.  And now I have to walk up the stairs or risk invalidating a previous complaint.

Here’s where we redirect the complaint, taking the blame away from ourselves.

The building security people are clearly out to get me.  They must read the site, and know that they’ve come up against a formidable foe, a complainer with a mission and an audience.  So they have set out to undermine me.  They think they can respond to my complaint, and I’ll quietly continue to use the elevator, despite my protests.

_Finally, we say things that don’t mean much, but sound good on television, to leave the reader feeling inspired.  No one pays attention to the middle of something they read, just the beginning and the end. _

They will be disappointed.  I will take the stairs.  Two at a time, if necessary.  I will not be defeated!  They think they can grease the squeaky wheel and get away unscathed, but that is not the way the world works.  I’m on to you, building security.  I’m going to take the stairs every day, just to spite you.