Can you point me to the Pete Rose exhibit, please?

I know what you're thinking. You're wondering just what does one have to do in order to qualify to be eligible to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Wonder no more, sparky.

1. A baseball player must have been active as a player in the Major Leagues at some time during a period beginning twenty (20) years before and ending five (5) years prior to election.
2. Player must have played in each of ten (10) Major League championship seasons, some part of which must have been within the period described in 3 (A).
Player shall have ceased to be an active player in the Major Leagues at least five (5) calendar years preceding the election but may be otherwise connected with baseball.
3. In case of the death of an active player or a player who has been retired for less than five (5) full years, a candidate who is otherwise eligible shall be eligible in the next regular election held at least six (6) months after the date of death or after the end of the five (5) year period, whichever occurs first.
4. Any player on Baseball's ineligible list shall not be an eligible candidate.

Fried what?

Recently I went to the Penguin with a couple of friends and they ordered a batch of fried pickles. I'd never even heard of fried pickles until I went to the Penguin for the first time a few years ago. Are they good? Sure, but I've usually had enough after about two pieces.

Holiday Openings

I heard that Wal-Mart is not only going to be open on Thanksgiving but they are also auctioning off Chinese babies all day long. That should be an exciting time. I recommend bringing in your children so that they can see just how fortunate they are, the ungrateful little punks.

Gimme back my uterus*

Ok, not mine, of course. I can call no one's uterus mine. But it looks like they's starting to belong to George Bush.

The parrot says, "Culture of life, bwaaaak, culture of life."

*Sung to the tune of "Gimme back my bullets" by Lynryd Skynryd.

A little fall color

Charlotte isn't New England but we do have some trees around here that get nice and pretty in the fall. This picture ain't nothing special but it has fall color in it, so there.

I love statistics

I found a site that lists the biggest box office hits of all time with the money adjust for inflation. It's pretty cool. You can view it here.

New words for new birds

How do you think George Bush will handle this problem. I reckon he'll probably recommend that them "foreigners up north oughta just start speaking English like everybody else of worth in the world."

Screw George Bush (this comment should not be taken as a threat toward the physical well being of the president and does not require any investigation by any of our police or intelligence services. Screw George Bush).

From an article on the morality of war by Garry Wills: "Even William Fulbright endorsed Lyndon Johnson's lies when he voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Only Senators Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening were courageous enough to defy the President and vote against it. You would think that this experience would make senators way of george W. Bush - but, no, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton voted to him authority to make war in Iraq." (The New York Review of Books, 11/18/04).

If a goodly number of our senators had the balls of their own convictions that damn George Bush would have been voted out of office.

God bless George Bush

I'm disgusted that I helped pay for some of this.

Sally Timms

Last night I went to the Evening Muse to see Sally Timms. She is touring in support of her new album called "In the World of Him." The opening act was a genuine American eccentric, Johnny Dowd. I recommend checking out some of the sound clips on Dowd's website. It's pretty cool stuff.

Dowd was entertaining and his band, that backed up both performers, was stellar. Sally was charming, funny and sang like an angel. It was the kind of show that reminds me why I still go out and see live music. I spent over an hour surrounded by the amazing voice of Sally Timms backed up by a crack band.

Here's a couple of pictures.

Poker Night

Saturday I went to Senior Engelbrecht's pad for a night of sexist guy talk with heavy ingesting of heart-attack-insuring food and poker playing. We laughed our asses off for about five hours. Being stupid males for a few hours is necessary to the continuing healthy existence of those males. A room full of gas and foul language is required for us to maintain a healthy hormonal balance. Give us some time to act like idiots and we'll be good and docile for a day or so. Of course there are extremes. A party animal and a cuckold aren't any good to anybody.

That preamble is just an excuse to show this little bit of amateur photoshopping.

Bring on the theocracy

Jesus, what a dick. Can't wait for the new attorney general. He helped our regime redefine what torture is and helped our government subvert the Geneva Convention.

I've seen some rhetoric recently concerning protecting marriage and "family" in reference to gay marriage. You know, if you substitute the word "Jews" for "gays" in these diatribes the language gets a little scary.

Also, I see that our vice president has been harping about how Bush has received the largest amount of votes ever for president. Of course he fails to mention that the second number of votes ever received by a candidate for the presidency was Bush's challenger, John Kerry. This is the kind of dishonesty, a dishonesty that relies of ignorance, that this administration has exhibited since day one.

I read a book review today (part of my job, how cool is that?) by David Foster Wallace in the recent New York Times Sunday book section. Wallace by himself is a writer whose use of words can sometimes cause you to put the piece of writing down, rub your eyes and think, "God, what a genius." He's the kind of writer that can make you doubt the existence of yourself and the world.

The book he was reviewing was a biography of Jorge Borges. I've never read Borges but Wallace's brilliant and challenging negative review of the biography (fiction used as an explanation of an author's state of mind. I had to agree, I don't buy that either) caused me to grab a collection of short stories off of the shelf and read one mentioned in the review. The story is called "The Immortal" and it's an amazing work of literature and it's a brain twister.

You have to wonder at a marvelous piece of literature that has the premise that everthing has been done before and will be done again and again and again... I have to imagine he would agree with the statement by Charles Bukowski who stated a poem doesn't have to have big words or mystical aspirations; it just has to say something in a way that is unique. Like George Carlin does when he stands on stage and puts nonsensical phrases together while claiming gleefully that no one has ever said those phrases ever in the history of the world. So in that sense I say: Hubristic Child Sharpener.

A Mekon in Charlotte?

I just saw that Sally Timms is going to be at the Evening Muse this Tuesday. Wouldn't you know, I have that day off and the following day also. Yee hah! A Mekon in my town? What the heck is going on? I am very excited excited. Now only if we could get the Waco Brothers to make an appearance in Charlotte then it would truly be a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

The good times ahead

Bring on the nutjobs.

It's starting to look like we are almost to the point where a Scopes Monkey Trial wouldn't cause a majority of Americans embarrassment. Someone hold me, I'm scared.

God bless our president

God Bless Neal Pollack

He wrote this today: "I've got your asexual stealth phrases right here, pig fuckers.

On an unrelated note I am thinking of moving my journal to Live Journal. Maybe I can use both and just cut and paste? What do you think?

Wow, he does bring people together, don't he?

My friend, Alan sent me this amazing article.

Seymour Hersh is my new hero

From an article in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Ask him why the Abu Ghraib scandal is important, and you'll get an earful. "Why are you asking me that question? Are you trying to torture me? Is that a torture question? If you can't answer that question, I'm not going to answer it." He's picking up speed. "Why is it important? It's important because -- let me tell you why it's important, in a nutshell! It's important because it's a symptom of a lack of care by the people at the top," he said.

"The president and (Vice President Dick) Cheney and (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld dehumanized the opposition from the beginning -- out of fear, out of anger, out of want of payback."

A disastrous consequence of that dehumanization, Hersh says, was a tacit agreement to overlook the Geneva Conventions.

"You don't mistreat people for the simple reason that you don't want to ever treat a soldier any different than you want your soldiers treated.

"People say Abu Ghraib was just horseplay, what am I worried about? But it's a symptom. When we learn about Guantanamo, we're going to be shamed. It's as bad as Andersonville," he said, citing the notorious Civil War prison where soldiers were starved."

A quote from our prez

"To make this nation stronger and better I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust."

You know what? Screw that. Screw him and his supporters. This guy is the most dangerous person in the world right now. There is no way in hell I am going to get behind this clown. He has nothing to offer me. My fellow countryman turned their back on a good and thoughtful politician in order to hide behind this right wing idealogue. Screw you guys that voted for him and screw him. This is not a time for reconciliation. This is a time to get angry. How can you possibly support someone who created a concentration camp in Cuba, created a policy that allowed Iraqi civilians to be tortured and killed in our military prisons and is personally responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis? Fuck him. As Liz Winstead quoted Gil Scott Heron on Air America Radio a few minutes ago, "Mandate, my ass."

Thank you, hillbillies

I guess it's pretty amazing, after all the fear-mongering and the false "war president" stance, that Kerry made it as close as he did. If you think about it Bush pretty much had the election won as soon as he established himself as a war president in the minds of the people.

Did you see some of the percentages in the redneck states? My god, I had no idea inbreeding was such a serious problem.

I see Fox "News" is the first network to declare Ohio for Bush. I guess there's no need to even pretend to be fair and biased at this point in the game.

Unless a miracle happens in Ohio it's gonna be four more years of shitty sytax, massive killing of foreign-type people and overall crappy governing from the Whitehouse. Jesus fuck.

Personally I thought that if the election was even close and Kerry won then it was a sad day for this country. The fact that Bush could bamboozle so many people. People like my mother who on the phone the other day admitted that Kerry was superior to Bush in many ways but she still felt she should vote for Bush because he was strong on terror. There is your difference in this election: a totally false belief that Bush is somehow strong on terror.

Book Lunch

Tomorrow I get to sit in a room with about 4 to 8 mommies and discuss my favorite book from the last year by Sheri Holman called The Mammoth Cheese. I recommend it.

New camera, biatch

I decided I could no longer live without a digital camera. I give you two results from my new Cannon:

Halloween Hijinks

The eastern border of Maple City is a ridge of glaciated hills that runs north to south. There is a road that cuts through a pass in the ridge that continues east for a couple of miles to another tiny town called Cedar. There is a two-track road you can access as you drive through the pass. It goes up steeply and at the summit is a dying cherry orchard that the former owner is allowed to harvest but not to maintain. Once the tree go wild and are no longer profitable the land will become part of the national park system. The orchard sits at the highest point in Leelanau County.

We were squatting in some woods near the bottom of the ridge on the outside edge of a curve that is the beginning of a nasty S-curve that emptied into the flashing light at the town's crossroads. It was Halloween night and it was dark and it cold. We had cartons full of eggs at our feet. We were outside the reach of any street lights. Across the curve from us we could see the small wooden Catholic church nuzzled into the steep knob the road curves around.

With me was Tony and Tony's cousin, Ray and a couple other neighborhood kids. The reason we were squatting in those woods next to the road is because we had already egged a few cars near the center of the village. We had moved to the outskirts because we were afraid the cops might show up.

Over the top of the pass a glow of oncoming headlights started to show. Some hissed "Car!" and we grab eggs. I had two eggs in my right hand and one in my throwing hand. When the car approached our position at the center of the turn we step out poised to nail this slow-moving vehicle. The car stops and a spotlight comes on. It's a fucking cop. We scatter. He hollered something like, "Hey, you kids!" I had no intention of allowing this guy to take me home to my step-father so I bolted across the road with Tony next to me. We split up when we hit the church grounds. Ray, who hadn't fully emerged from the woods, hit the deck and froze.

As I was flying through woods, dodging branches and hurdling fallen trees I had no idea if that cop was behind me or if I was a mile ahead. All I know is that I got to the point where if he hadn't caught me by then I was free so I stopped. When Tony, Ray and I met up a little later at Tony's trailer Ray said that the cop had stopped his car and got out but the rest of us scattered so quickly that he shined his light around for a couple of minutes and drove off. Ray couldn't stop laughing about how everyone bolted like cockroaches. "That cop stepped out of his car expecting to catch a bunch of dumb kids but as soon as he stepped out you were all fucking gone! God, that was funny." Ray was almost busted in his hiding place because he was having trouble with suppressing his laughter.