My All-Star Picks

Not a flashy line-up, but I always try and vote for who deserves it, not who I like or don't like. So you'll notice, no Padres. And although I struggled with the choice, I did vote for a Dodger, a Yankee, and a Red Sock, 3 teams I cannot stand.

At National League shortstop, I took Edgar Renteria over Jose reyes. My anti-New York bias may have influenced that choice, but Renteria is having a fantastic year.

I don't think you can argue that any if my choices, if not starting, shouldn't at least be on the team.

And I don't feel bad about not voting for any Padres, because if things go as they should, Jake Peavy, Chris Young, and Trevor Hoffman will be named as pitchers.

Note to MLB marketing department: Fan votes should be available as an embeddable code to post on blogs, myspace, etc.

Impeach Cheney

When I first read that Dick Cheney was of the opinion that the office of the Vice President was not a part of the Executive Branch, I thought it was a joke. I mean, that's just crazy talk. Well, when it turned out to be true, it got me thinking. A lot of the crap Cheney has pulled is absolutely horrifying, but it's always been the sort of stuff he can get away with since the people outraged, meaning people who pay attention to politics as a hobby and/or profession, do not constitute a population big enough to really matter. But when you have the balls to start asserting things about the basic structure of our form of government as laid out in the Constitution, things a fifth grader knows, then you've become a dangerous threat. A lot of us have always believed this, but this latest episode makes it so clear that something must be done.

Impeach Dick Cheney.

I don't say this as some rhetorical device to show how fed up I am. I am serious. Congress needs to man up and ITMFA.

Stop The Presses!

I am so moving to France.



Yes, you read right, that says "Associated Press", not "Access Hollywood".

Priceline: Destination, San Francisco

Last weekend, I decided I needed to get outta dodge. So I put in a Priceline request for a hotel in SF. Being a Saturaday night in downtown San Francisco, and my "name your own price" of $45, I fully expected to get rejected, truning my weekend getaway into more of a day trip. But, lo and behold, my offer was accepted.

The first thing I did, of course, was to hit a taco shop in the Mission District. As explained earlier, El Farolito is probably my favorite taco shop outside of San Diego County.



On my way to El Farolito, I saw this truck



and knew I was in San Francisco.

Now, I've been to San Francisco at least a hundred times, but for some reason had never really ventured outside of Downtown / Mission / Tenderloin / North Beach / Haight. To me all that WAS San Francisco. So when my roommate asked something like, "you know how when you take Geary all the way, you eventually hit the ocean?", my answer was a very confused "no". So that's what I did next. I drove down Geary and lo and behold, the ocean.

Why had I never thought to do this before? I got out of my car to take in some fresh ocean air, when i saw this:



Whoa, man. This must be some sort of old military installation. I got all excited and ran down to check it out. Yeah, totally must have been.






There was even a cool cave. I guess soldiers could use this for, I dunno, something.



So as you can see, I was pretty excited about my run in with history. I had concocted a whole vison of a military installation from the 1700's. I wondered how the soldiers spent their time and what not. I didn't yet know the history of the story of these ruins, but when I got home I would surely find out.

Um, yeah, about that.

Apparently, the "ruins" were just the remnants of the Sutro Baths. A bathouse built in 1896, destroyed in 1966. Way to ruin my imagination, wikipedia! Anyways, yeah, I'm pretty much a big ol' moron.

(note: when trying to explain to others where you were, never just casually ask "Hey, you ever been to that bathouse in San Francisco?" You will get some looks, let me tell you.)

But nevertheless it was nice. I'd never been out this way before so it was nice to see new beaches and neighborhoods. I headed over to the Haight to do some record shopping at Amoeba Records, and then it was time to finally check in to my $45 hotel.

The hotel sure had a nice name, The Edwardian. Oooh la la. Reality quickly dispelled any high society dreams I had.

I wasn't expecting much for $45 in downtown SF on a saturday night, but I did expect to have my own bathroom and shower. No go. Both were in the hallway, for all to use. Here is the shower:



And here is the toilet:



Let me translate that last one if you can't read it:

PLEASE BE CONCIDERATE AND TIDEY UP AFTER YOURSELF WHEN USING THE SHARED WAS FACILITIES. YOUR FELLOW GUESTS WILL APPRECIATE IT AS MUCH AS YOU DO.

Someone didn't listen, because when I went in to tinkle, someone had left a floater. I spared you that picture.

The room itself was a glorious and roomy. Okay it wasn't.



It was $45 so I'm not gonna bitch, but for now on when a hotel describes itself as "European", I'm steering clear. For now on "European hotel" = "hostel".

Next day was pretty casual. Just strolled down Market, checked out Yerba Buena Gardens. Headed to the East Bay and went to Ikea in Emeryville (West Sac Ikea can blow me), and met my new friend Nicole for lunch at a place called Rudy's Can't Fail cafe, which is apparently owned by one of the Green Day dudes. It's caddy corner to the Pixar Studios, which I had no idea were in Emeryville.

Then I went home. And that was that.

Room for cream

I have a question. I don't necessarily hate Starbucks, but I do try to only go there if other options do not exist. To it's credit, Starbucks is consistent, and every 10 visits or so, I somehow end up with free coffee. And free stuff is the key to staying on my good side. To its detriment, it's, well, it's Starbucks. Why am I trying to justify my Starbucks patronage? Little defensive there, big guy. Anyways, when at Starbucks, my default order is a large iced coffee, unsweetened (I use Splenda) and no "room for cream", as I only use a slight dash of cream. Here is what that order looks like:



Now, as you can see, that's pretty damn full. It can sometimes create some spillage when adding said Splenda and cream. So, last time I went in, when asked "room for cream?", I said yes. The result was this:



So the question is, who the hell uses that much cream? I mean fer chrissakes that must be like 1/6th of the total volume. If they are going to leave that much room, shouldn't the proper question be "room for milk?"

The Cars Of Kings County

This is how we roll in the County of Kings, yo.

I swear to you all four of these pictures were taken in a 15 minute period in Hanford, CA. Hanford is a few miles from my hometown of Lemoore.

I'll always have fond memories of Kings County; there are too many memories, good and bad, not to. But these photos represent, in a nutshell, why I moved.



I'm sure those rust marks do indeed have Sinful Intentions.



Okay, okay, you're white trash and proud of it. WE GET IT.



If, perchance, you happen to find yourself with an unrequited urge to clown, this delightful gentleman would just so happen to be down.



Apparently Winnie prefers regular old cowgirl over reverse cowgirl. Never mind that fatass in the cliche'd t-shirt in the reflection.

Random Pictures: The Food Edition

1. Mmmmm. San Diego. Phil's BBQ.Used to be this tiny place in Mission Hills that was crazy busy and had the best BBQ in San Diego. Now they've moved to a bigger place near the Sports Arena, where it is crazy busy and has the best BBQ in San Diego.



2. The best part of In N Out: CHEESE PAPER!!! Don't think for a second I don't lick the paper in front of everyone. There is no shame in my game.



3. Carl's, Jr. Buffalo Chicken Sandwich. What is promised:



What is delivered:

Underachiever

The New York Times has a salary comparison calculator on its website.

Ouch. I mean I knew I didn't make as much as I could or should. I've always had a sort of ambition problem. But to see it laid out bare like this, well man, that's a kick to the gut I didn't need. For a 35 year old, honky, college-educated, male on the west coast, I suck. You don't need to know how much I make, but let's just say it's well below the median shown.


Advice to Young America: Don't spend your entire 20's working in a record store.

Rudy Can Fail

Bye, Rudy. It was nice knowing you.

Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war.

He cited "previous time commitments" in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why -- the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani's lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.

Dis fuggin guy, fuggitaboutit.

Mike Gravel

Mike Gravel is running for president. And he's not just some unknown dude on the internet or anything. He's actually participates in the Democratic debates and whatnot. So, you're a candidate for president, and while yeah, chances are you aren't going to when, you have been afforded a lot of publicity. Now it's time to introduce yourself to America with a campaign video. Tell America your ideas for the future and what sets you apart from America. Get some momentum and buzz. Energize your supporters. Ladies and Gentleman, I give you....Mike Gravel!



What.

The.

Fuck?

Literally

Driving home from SF yesterday, I heard the word 'literally' misused not once, but twice, by tow different radio hosts.

The first guy, discussing the turmoil in Gaza and the West Bank, said that Palestinians are "literally eating their own".

Now I know the situation there is tragic, but I hightly doubt that Palestinians have resorted to cannibalism.

The second guy, discussing the NBA, say that during the draft, fans are "literally on pins and needles."

When the entire point of your job is to effectively communicate verbally, how do you keep your job when you misuse 'literally'?

Anyways, I was immediately reminded of David Cross' take on the subject. (Hit Play)

Sad

Mitt Romney is an asshole

If Romney was this big of a dick as Governor of Massuchusetts, I shudder to think of him as president. From ThinkProgress.

Decorated Iraq war veteran Anthony Circosta seemed like an ideal candidate for a pardon from then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for his boyhood conviction for a BB gun shooting.

Romney said no — twice — despite the recommendation of the state’s Board of Pardons.

At age 13, Circosta was convicted of assault for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB gun, a shot that didn’t break the skin. Circosta worked his way through college, joined the Army National Guard and led a platoon of 20 soldiers in Iraq’s deadly Sunni triangle.

In 2005, as he was serving in Iraq, he sought a pardon to fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer.

Well, I guess, you do the crime, you do the time, right? Ol' Mitt is just a law and order type, and to make exceptions for 13-year-olds shooting BB guns, well that would just send the wrong message.

Except that...

Romney said it’s “worth looking at a pardon [for Scooter Libby],” because special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald “clearly abused prosecutorial discretion” by going on a “political vendetta” against Libby despite knowing he was not the original source of the leak.

Whattadick.

Sopranos

I just watched the Sopranos finale. So I go online to see what reaction there is, and it's mostly negative. I don't understand why. If you're a Sopranos devotee, you've been watching for nearly a decade, so you should be overly familiar with the pace and plotting of the show. You know that plot lines do not get resolved, that characters are introduced and forgotten. This is par for the course. Yet suddenly you expect the show to end in a Stephen King-like ending of violence and explosions, and everything gets wrapped up in a tidy package? If so, I don't think you've really been watching the show, and you've completely misunderstood the entire endeavor.

Random cellphone pics, part one.

Haven't cleaned out the ol' cell phone camera since I got it, so here goes.

This is what happens when you park under a blossiming tree in downtown Sacramento, and it rains.

These are a bunch of morons who camped out in front of a Best Buy on Thanksgiving night. I'm assuming their families are glad they aren't around.

This is a fallout shelter sign in downtown Sacramento. My buddy Sarah pointed it out to me.

There are a bunch of transmission towers in Walnut Grove, California, and believe it or not, this one is the sixth tallest structure to have ever existed.


Pixie = cozy.

Royal Bum-er

Well as long as we're talking baseball...


Oh, and Happy 500th, Trevor!

MLB, the new RIAA

I love baseball. But I hate "Major League Baseball". For years now, they've declared war on baseball fans (i.e. customers) by trying to use RIAA-like tactics to try and control every single aspect of their business. The latest: attacking Slingbox, and basically calliing Slingbox and it's users criminals.

"Of course, what they are doing is not legal," said Mellis [General Coucel for MLB Advanced Media] . "We and other leagues have formed a group to study the issue and plan our response. A lot depends on ongoing discussions. Plus, there's no guarantee that Slingbox will be around next year. It's a start-up."

Problem, is, of course, it's totally legal. You're already paying for the channels you can recieve through a Slingbox, and the Slingbox does not record. But MLB, yet again, wants to play the part of control freak.

As for the arrogant, dismissive jab that Slingbox is a start-up that might not be around next year, well that can be prevented.

Head in the sand

At my job, there is a TV. Management prefers that that TV be tuned into a "news" channel. I'd prefer to go all Keith Moon and toss that sucker out the window. There are 3 major 24 hours "news" networks, yet none of them report any goddamned news. There's a whole world out there. There's so much news you should never see the same story twice, much less every single hour.

Today, I logged what MSNBC covered from 12:00 to 12:45 (at 12:45 the TV was switched to a local channel to cover a local breaking story). Here, sadly, is what was covered:

1. Crowd gathers to watch Ocean 13 stars do that hand imprint thing.

2. Bush tries to soothe Putin's feelings.

3. Hail & lightning in Kansas or somewhere.

4. Scooter Libby gets sentenced.

5. Public beaches in Malibu are hard to get to.

6. Fighers at Boston Pops have charges dropped or something.

7. Immigration bill type stuff.

8. Do parents push their kids too far?

9. Missing girl in kansas

10. Senator dies.

11. Shootout in Shingle Springs(click- channel changes).

Of these, numbers 2, 4, 7, and 10 are legitimate national news stories. The rest are local stories. What's missing from this list? Hint: starts with an I, ends with a RAQ?

No news from Iraq? Nothing? We're not at war? No deaths, nothing, it doesn't exist. Osama? Fingers in your ears, la-la-la-la-la. Until I'm proven otherwise, my assumption is that the news networks are deliberately not covering Iraq. And it's not that today is the exception or anything; it's like this all day, every day, on all three channels, until the "opinion" shows start. And that's a whole other abomination. Ah, liberal bias. If you're not going to cover the news, do not call yourself a news channel, dickheads.

Chick Habit

Quentin Tarantino knows how to put a soundtrack together, and the soundtrack to Death Proof (his half of Grindhouse) is no exception. Great songs are everywhere in the movie. But when it ended, and the credits song played, my ears had an orgasm. The music was fantastic, then the voice- I know that voice! That's the girl from the Shitbirds! Quentin Tarantino used a Shitbirds song? No freaking way. So I waited to see who the song was credited to, and it didn't say the Shitbirds; it said April March. Who the hell is April March? But under her name it said Sympathy For The Record Industry, which was the Shitbirds label. So I was definitely onto something. A quick wikipedia search at home confirmed, April March did indeed sing for the Shitbirds, but has had quite a solo career which I was utterly unaware of.

Anyways, back to the song. It's one of the finest pop songs these ears have heard in the past 10 years. It's just fucking PERFECT. So I thought I would share it with all y'all, along with an old Shitbirds tune to boot.

(Click to play, right click - 'save as' to download)

April March - Chick Habit

The Shitbirds - You Said That

"Go Raiders!"

Robert Comer never flinched Tuesday morning as he was injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs that put him to death.

Comer took a picture of his daughter into the death chamber with him and seemed defiant as he smiled and maintained eye contact with his witnesses as drugs coursed through his body.

His last words were "Go Raiders!" and with that, his smile slowly faded until he passed out. His chest stopped moving after the third drug was given to him.

By 10:08 a.m. he was dead.

Personally, I'm shocked, and my world has been turned upside down. A Raiders fan on Death Row? What's next? Lesbians like the WNBA? Rednecks like NASCAR? 2 + 2 = 4?

Whitey Will Complain

Oh, I love it when rich, white, christian, male people whine.

Bill O'Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you've got to cap with a number.

You caught me, Bill.

Actually I'd settle for breaking any one part of that power structure, be it white (Obama!), Christian, or male.

Okay, so basically, O'Reilly is stating the obvious, that there is in fact a white Christian male power structure, and he feels that it needs to be protected. That's David Duke territory if you ask me, but it's Bill O'Reilly, just some TV hothead, so who cares?

John McCain: In America today we've got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture [What thehell?], but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don't need so many.

Oh Christ. "Respected" presidential candidate John McCain wouldn't actually agree with Power Structure O'Reilly, would he?

O'Reilly: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don't know, I don't know. We've got to cap it.

McCain: We do, we do. I agree with you.

Oh yes he does.

Poor McCain faces a quandry. No brown people or brown people who we can exploit and throw away during an "economic downturn"? What to do, what to do?

Mr. Straight Talk has decisions to make. And I have to make amends for once respecting him.

The Yankees are gay