A Follow-Up
Karolina Sprem lost at Wimbledon yesterday.

Too bad. I was hoping for more typos.

Besides the funny name, who is she?
Any of you who spend any time at all watching ESPN or paying attention to tennis have probably heard of Karolina Sprem. She's the young lady who managed to defeat Venus Williams in a tiebreaker the other day, giving her a straight-set victory over the two-time Wimbledon champion.

She's unranked in the tournament, and beats the number three seed 7-6, 7-6. Nice job, but a fluke, right?

Wrong.

Just Sunday, she defeated Bulgaria's Magdalena Maleeva 6-4, 6-4, to make her the first Croatian ever to advance to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. Ever.

And that's not all!

Her name makes me giggle.

I'm ashamed to be West Virginian. Again.
While poking through my local paper, the Charleston Gazette, this morning, I found perhaps the most idiotic and hateful thing I've read in a long time.

Please keep in mind that I disagree 100% with this letter, but sometimes, it's a little cathartic to show the reason why I'm bitching.

So here you go:

don’t think the Founding Fathers could possibly have conceived of the diverse religions that exist when they included freedom of religion in the Constitution. I think they meant freedom to be Christians in whatever way people wanted. Remember, the Puritans were persecuted in England and forced to immigrate to the new America.

I don’t think any religion that worships anything except the God of Christians should be allowed in the United States. Those Muslims should be deported. If they are American citizens, then renounce Islam or be exiled to some island, which the United States could purchase. No more burqas, no more veiled women, no more mosques, no more Islam in the United States.

I know that there have been wars initiated by Christians, but nowhere in the Christian credo does it say that to kill unbelievers is a way to heaven. If you want to come to America, then adopt the Christian religion. It’s as simple as that.

Jarold C. Leffel

Racine

I'd almost forgotten how backwoods my home state is...it's nice to know there's always someone to remind me.

When Smart Cops go Dumb.

PLEASANT PRAIRIE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Three bodies lashed together with nylon rope that washed ashore over the weekend have been identified as a father and two sons, and police are considering the deaths as homicides.

Homicides, eh? Just because they were tied to sandbags? Seems like a stretch if you ask me.

Random question
Is "Yo, ho, blow the man down" an innappropriate song to sing during a tornado?

It's not the principle, it's the principal
Quick question:
Let's presume you're a pitcher in a Major League Baseball game. You've just intentionally walked a modern version of the Mighty Casey, and this spindly, 500-year-old former leadoff hitter approaches the plate.

Let us further presume that this spindly, 500-year-old former leadoff hitter then bunts a pitch towards you.

How do you let this player reach first?

For the answer to this question, ask Justin Speier of the Toronto Blue Jays. For the crotchety old man's perspective, ask spindly, 500-year-old former leadoff hitter Ray Durham (who's actually only 34 in September).

Letting Ray Durham reach base on a bunt to the pitcher should be grounds for summary demotion to AAA ball.

This man is officially nuts
Some of you may remember a post from a couple of days ago regarding a man who killed his wife because she removed his whanger with a breadknife. If you don't remember it, it's two posts down.

I just read this from The Independent, a South African paper:

A man who lost his penis in a fight with his estranged wife admitted on Friday that he had cut off his own genitals before killing her, police in this central German city said. Authorities said on Wednesday that it was the 50-year-old woman who had sliced off her 37-year-old husband's penis with a breadknife in a domestic dispute before he stabbed her... Police said that the man had acknowledged during questioning that he had maimed himself but did not explain his motive. Surgeons on Wednesday sewed the severed organ back on after the man was detained.

Well, forget what I said about his wife. I owe her an apology. This guy is obviously a complete and total nutball. After all, what self-respecting man would ever willingly remove his own tackle? That's like a bird removing its wings to spite the sky. And then killing the sky.

I hope I never read another story like this in my life, unless it somehow involves the Eiffel Tower, motorboats, and a catfish. Then it would be OK.

(Read the followup article here.)

Dear God.
I just got a confirmation email from my department secretary regarding my attempts to be interviewed for a promotion here at the University (I'm going for Phonathon Coordinator).

I have four interviews, with four different people, in three different locations, over the space of 3 hours.

Whether I get the job or not, I'm going to die.

Justifiable Homicide?
From an online news article:

A Ghanaian man stabbed his wife to death after she cut off his penis with a breadknife, police in the central German city of Kessel said...Police said surgeons sewed the severed organ back on after the man was detained and taken to hospital.

I'd take the temporary insantiy defense myself, but that's just me.

By the way: A breadknife? Seriously, dude, how drunk were you? Did she try to cut out your heart with a pencap first or something?

(read the article here and another one here)

Well, it beats iron rations
I've been sick most of this afternoon and evening - not really sure what it is, but it's related to my sinuses, I'm sure, since they hurt and are draining into my throat. Generally, those are two very good symptoms for sinus trouble. Took myself a Sudafed Sinus, I did, and I'm feeling well enough that I just ate a load of spaghetti.

One of the things we all know about spaghetti is that it's stored dry, in a box. Since the advent of the cardboard box, replacing such great storage devices as the outdoors and lead casks, dry goods sales in this country have skyrocketed. And, as such, rather than making my own noodles, I can go out and buy them. Good thing, too, since I don't have the space for one of those noodle-maker things, and I'm pretty sure my Pla-Doh kits from back home won't work.

Now, one of the things about boxes is that they should be kept sealed or closed. You know, with that little tab thing that says, "Insert into slot?"

You, in Clayton! I hear that giggling, you pervert.

Back on the subject at hand, I very often ignore that insert tab thing (stop it), since the way I figure it, you can just fold the tab underneath the box flap (seriously), and it'll hold just as well.

That may be the case with something like cereal, which very rarely exerts a pressure on the top of the box when you lift the box up, but with spaghetti, you've gotta be careful - you store it on its side, right? So when you pull the box out from the pantry, the noodles inside the box have an intertial moment that forces them to stay where they are, rather than moving in unison with the box - and if you move the box quickly, that spaghetti can stay where it is in space and actually force its way from the moving spaghetti box - just like all of those tablecloth/dishes demonstrations you watched on Mr. Wizard.

I don't know if I cleaned up all of those noodles...there was probably half a pound of them decorating my kitchen floor. But I did manage to eat a little, which was nice - and I got to put some of Mama's Meat Sauce on it.

Sickos.

Random Post
I went golfing yesterday - or, perhaps, it's more correct to say that I made divots on otherwise healthy grass for two hours.

And I have an ingrown nail on my left pinky finger. It's supremely lame.

We should stop bitching right about....now.
From the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch:

LONDON - As rising prices pushed gasoline past the equivalent of $5.79 a gallon in Britain on Wednesday, truckers threatened to strike and cabbies complained about working extra hours to make ends meet. (Italics by blog owner.)
...
Waving a receipt showing he had just paid $94 to fill up his small van with diesel fuel, Ian Wheatley, 21, said: "Can't we buy gas off you over in America? Aren't we (President George W.) Bush's biggest ally?"

Full story here.

That's right...we're doing all of this moaning and complaining and out-and-out whining about paying what we pay for gas, and here I am only shelling out 1.99 for a gallon of 87-proof car food.

I don't really like having gas prices as high as they are, but to be completely honest, we've still got it better than everyone else. As a country, we're starting to act like the spoiled kid who went ballistic because he was asked to clean his room for the first time, rather than having a maid do it. And it's pretty much sickening.

Horrible Geek Moment
No thanks to She-who-knows-who-she-is,(livejournal here), I've taken a geek test, and scored disturbingly high on it.

"32.34714% - Total Geek"

That's right - I'm a total geek. Take the test here.

Now, scoring high on a geek test isn't particularly bad - I mean, I've always known I was pretty much a geeky kind of guy my whole life.

The bad part is that not only do I know how to count to 31 on one hand, but I willingly figured out that I can count to 1023 if I use both.

What a great sports weekend
I watched Game 6 of the NBA's western conference finals yesterday, and boy are my eyes tired. You'll excuse the reference to an old joke, but my God...that was by far some of the most hands-on officiating I've ever seen.

Normally, especially in pro football, you'll hear complaints from a lot of people that the officials call too few penalties during the postseason. The officials, and the NFL front office, use this tired and weak excuse that "there are fewer penalties because the teams are better, and therefore the quality of play is higher." I think everyone can understand if I say that's bullshit - the quality of play isn't higher, the league just wants the games to move a little more quickly.

But the NBA, apparently, has taken a completely separate mindset: Let's call more penalties! Let's make the foul calls on really piddling little things that we said we weren't going to call this season! Hooray!

Honestly, could the grey shirts have been any more annoying last night? I don't watch a lot of basketball, because I can't play it for shit, but I do recognize when games are well-called and when they aren't. And last night's wasn't.

So there, I've said it.

By the way, the reason that last night was such a great sports night, and really made the whole long weekend? I got to watch the first Giants game I've seen in at least six years on television.

Thank God for cable.