"Speaking of curry and chocolate." he said, trying and failing to make it sound like a perfectly natural segue.

As for this one:
I guess it is good to be king.

More songs about drinking and food.

Remind me, next time I get the urge to try out something I see on Food Network. Just say the words "Horseradish Aquavit." That'll learn me, but good.

Much better, was the Altoids double feature. I'm not afraid of new flavors, and really the discovery at Sheetz today of the Apple Sours was a good find. While it won't replace either the original two sours, it's a nice changeup. And it gives you great line of describing them as Apple Crack. It also occurred to me that we now have the appropriate pieces for the Altoids Homeland Security Watch.

Apple Sours
Tangerine Sours
Citrus Sours
Wintergreen
Spearmint

The other part of that was confirming that I would, in future, be able to grab more of the Ginger Altoids. I had become concerned that, since I had been unable to locate any other packages of it since I got one for Christmas, it was actually an import of that same store where I had found the wasabi and curry chocolate bars. If you like ginger, it's probably the only time you'll get that as commercial candy in the US, and it is good, if you go for that.

This article
is proof that the evil geniuses at Disney are hard at work making sure I don't move to California. (They know I'm way too cheap to spend extra money on that much air conditioning. Clever, those cunning devils.) Apparently, this originally had to have been part of their plans to thaw out Walt.

Finally, reading this, I just lost it. I don't like cell phones to begin with, I don't like cell phones in cars, I find it dangerous enough that you'd be willing to drop drop one sense from your observation while driving. Then people started with the whole TV in cars thing. You could tell the idea was to cull everyone in the integral under the money/sense curve when they started putting the TV's in on the steering wheel REPLACING THE AIR BAGS. But this, this is simply the limit. The only way this joker could have made it worse would be if he was actually driving while watching, while talking on his cell phone, while...well. Then he'd have no hands on the wheel.

Not that I'm trying to drag this out, but I also forgot (okay, maybe I was repressing the memory):

Henry Rodriguez (Extracted from the Mexican leagues)

I guess on the other hand the Pirates are starting so low, that no matter what happens, even if they lose 100, that can only be seen as exceeding expectations.

Grist for the mill:

In listing the spring training signees and invites, I forgot three of them
Chris Truby (online baseball's favorite Satanist)
Ruben Mateo
Juan Acevedo

Today's hot topic on Pittsburgh sports radio for the criminally insane, submitted for your grinding: The Pitt-UConn game was beaten in the ratings by the Daytona 500.

FTPE--name these things that shouldn't be put all in one place...

The fact that is sticking in my head regarding the A-Rod to the Yankees deal is something I saw on ESPNNEWS while flipping channels Sunday. That fact being that with this trade, the Yankees will have 6 of the top 12 individual salaries in Major League Baseball. (IIRC, 1, 2, 6, 8, 11, and 12) The point of this being, having taken a seminar in nuclear engineering, and having worked in the nuclear power industry, I just want to grab Steinbrenner by the turtleneck, and scream: "DON'T YOU REALIZE THERE'S A REASON WE DON'T PUT ALL THE PLUTONIUM IN ONE PLACE?!" So, I'm sitting here waiting for the critical mass. (Or critical Mass., as I figure Theo Epstein has probably blown an artery at this point.) Basically you've got one control rod left in the organization, and that's Torre, and though the conventional wisdom is that he can keep this from going supercritical, we've also never seen the system maxed out like this before. And with George at any time about three losses away from doing his Kim Jong-Il impression, well, it's going to be a nice wild ride.

Sadly, the same thing applies to the Pirates, though in this case I'd be grabbing them by the neck and screaming "DON'T YOU REALIZE THERE'S A REASON WE DON'T PUT ALL THE MANURE IN ONE PLACE?!" Methane builds up, and this one's going to blow. For those of you who haven't seen the Pirate acquisitions list going to Spring Training, allow me to fill you in:

Jason Boyd (racking up the court appearances as we speak)
Chris Stynes
Daryle Ward
Jose Mesa
Chris Singleton
Mark Guthrie
Rick Reed
Orlando Merced
Randall "Corndog" Simon
and pending him actually signing on the dotted line: Raul Mondesi.

GEAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!! It's almost as if we collected every guy out there that not only wasn't wanted, but was established as locker room or PR cancer. I truly expect something dire to emerge from this combination this year, though I can't predict what exactly. You know where I'd go with this, but frankly, it's still my team, and I just can't bring myself to call it. At this point, my best hope for the year is that they take clips from Pirates of the Caribbean and play them on Jumbotron. If they do this clip just once in the year, then I will feel justified.

"You are without a doubt the worst pirate I've ever heard of."
"But you have heard of me."

I made a rule a long time ago, prior to starting up this, that any message I publish that was the semiotic equivalent of beating someone over the head with a baseball bat wasn't something I wanted to print. It wasn't one person, it wasn't one viewpoint, and it wasn't even just quizbowl. (For example, the Pirates general staff would probably be up and running for a Louisville Slugger Lobotomy). Let's just put it at that and move forward.

I'm more than a bit intrigued by this process. The combination of this and some of the work on aerogels (listed here) is making me wonder if the proper question of energy about twenty years from now is not the collection of oil, but agriculture, specifically ethanol. (Admittedly, the aerogel work focuses on not ethanol, but methanol, but between the two of these I can see something that could completely disrupt the home heating industry.)

After waiting for this to come down, and not even being the top story, I got to thinking about how stormy the past year has been for Pitt football. And then something started playing in my head, and like most earworms the only way to drive it out is to sing along. S'anyway... my apologies to Gordon Lightfoot, and most of the Pitt fans reading, but it was either output this, or have it grind my head raw.

The legend lives on from Oakland on down
The big river called Monongahela
Where heroes are good, and they do what they should
Until of course they up and fail ya
He came from the north and he showed off his worth
Still some thought his background was troubled
He caught balls in the end zone which QB's would send
Though the coverage around him was doubled

For the trouble we'd see in the fall of '03
I guess we'll blame Donna Shalala
A half a league onward was taken all downward
To the ACC, they won't delay ya.
The Cards and Cinci won't replace Miami
Though basketball's prospects look stronger
But winning football from Marquette or DePaul
Could take just a little bit longer

If the coach will not play ya, you shouldn't just stay
No loyalty needed for that, kid
You're on national TV, but it's not you they see
In the face of a Hurricane night win.
Then off to New York to the Heisman Award
One last star turn in the primetime.
But your name won't get called if you just catch the ball
I guess, son, then: it's better luck next time.

Bye to the BCS, bye to success
Eight and four will just raise up the ire
Your streak broken and torn on a Saturday morn
As Cavs go and shoot out your tire
So your conference is through, and you might be too
If you stay and lose your draft position,
Thought he said that he'd stay, to see the next day
But his dad had just made his decision

Was it second or third year? The pivotal word
Was the date of his class' graduation
He'd done one year, you see, in a preparatory
So he wanted a league consultation
"We'd like you, but yet, there's Maurice Clarett
And he'd shatter our by-laws to pieces.
So just stay there and wait, till we get it all straight
Then we'll grant you your college releases."

His legend lives on from Oakland on down
Though next autumn that may mean the Raiders
And some will forgive him, or live and let live
But in Pittsburgh, we're all playa haters.
So off to the draft, go practice your craft
On Primetime they're waitin' to herald
If injured in play, we trust Berman will say
"It's the Wreck of the Larry Fitzgerald!"
"It's the Wreck of the Larry Fitzgerald!"

Okay, I called it. Life is good.

It's Groundhog Day! So today's entry is mostly about things I've written about before.

Now folks, when you go back to a couple days back and I explained how I thought that groundhogs could do things like blow up your house. Well, groundhogs do appear to be responsible for a lot of evil in the world, and thus when the rapture hit Omaha, this was allowed to manifest itself. (What d'ya say? 89 octane nightmare fuel for the kids? 92?)

I can consider myself doubly blessed in managing to catch enough of the Lingerie Bowl (purely for the irony value, okay, not purely), and CBS' "Special Mystery Halftime Guest Star". There's obviously something wrong when I'm not the only one in the room criticizing the lack of a passing game in the Lingerie Bowl. (You can take just about every connotation of that sentence and it will be true.) Also I should note there's a couple of shots of player 0 from Team Dream that really need to go onto longsnapper.com. Bill pointed out the quote of the week (possibly the year) from the Lingerie Bowl. The fake quote of the year is what's playing in my head now, after all the promotional work, I've somehow conflated voices or something, and now I have Kermit the Frog saying: "It's the Muppet Show, with our very special guest star: Janet Jackson's Breast! YEEEEAAYYYY!" And what's getting me every time is the "YEEEEAAYYYY!"

As for the rest of the game (okay the ads, I didn't have a horse to root for in this race), I really want to put together some shards-of-glass popsicles. I think this is a simple matter. Pour hot sugar syrup onto a chilled pan, allow to cool, apply hammer, put shards into freshly unwrapped popsicle. It just seems like a perfect fun family project. (Okay, if you were an evil Martha Stewart...Okay, a more evil Martha Stewart.)

Alaska's criminal bears get more airtime, as they commit check fraud for Pepsi, while the Charmin Bear expands his attempts to brainwash the youth by making that whole quarterback-center relationship just that much more awkward. A push for the reputation of bears.

Craig provided me with the bit of data to decide, whether or not Mr. Marino was going on the list. If he's not committed, the search for a GM will be not good but interesting. If he is committed, he's starting out from a weak position. Either way, fraught.