You think YOUR boss is a dick?

Well, at least he hasn't shot you.

Yet.

EAST POINT, Georgia (AP) -- The owner of a car dealership has been accused of killing two employees because they kept asking for pay raises.

Rolandas Milinavicius has been charged with two counts of murder in the shooting deaths of Inga Contreras, 25, and Martynas Simokaitis, 28....

Milinavicius, 38, turned himself in two days after the shootings and confessed to the killings, Popham said.

"As I understand, the employees were not really happy about the pay, and they had questioned him about it over the course of time," Popham said. "That morning he said he just snapped."

Tony Gwynn

Well, today was the day.

Anthony Keith Gwynn is in the Hall of Fame.

(prepare for sentimental rambling)

From around 1984 to the day he retired, a large portion of my life consisted of the idol worship of Tony Gwynn. Mark had Lou Whitaker, Eric had Tony Armas, I had Gwynn.

Most of this time frame was pre-internet, so since I lived in Lemoore, 6 hours away from San Diego, I had no real access to anything live unless they played the Giants or they were somehow on national TV. Therefore, two of th biggest things in my life were: The sports section of the Fresno Bee to check the previous nights box score, and CNN Sports Tonight. Me and my friends tended to favor Fred Hickman and the porn star looking dude over the ESPN clowns. Sports Tonight came on I believe at 11:30 pm, at which point I should have been in bed.

Moving to San Diego and the internet of course changed all that. Stats were available instantly, and now I could actually go see my idol. Rarely did he disappoint. Even on bad, bad Padre teams he always managed to remain a bright spot. Game winning hits almost became routine.

I still think Tony should have been the MVP over Andre Dawson. Nobody agrees with me, and it wasn't even an issue at the time, as he finished 8th in voting. But c'mon, 218 hits, 36 doubles, 56 stolen bases (bet that shocked ya), and a .370 batting average? .370! Of course in 1994 he would bat .394 before baseball took a big shit on everyone. Even at .394 he finished 7th in MVP voting in a strike shortened year. So baseball writers have spent the last few weeks praising Tony, deservedly, but where were they when he was actually kicking ass? Huh? Huh?

Personal high notes for me were:

3) Tony soring the game winning run in the 1994 All Star game.

2) Getting to briefly shake Tony's hand as he circled the field after his last game at Jack Murphy...er Qualcomm. I told him he was robbed in 87. He looked confused. I guess I really AM the only one who believes this.

1) His home run against the Yankees in the 1998 World Series. That Yankees team was historically great, but for a moment, Gwynn's monster shot had all of us who drove to Qualcomm to watch the game on the Jumbotron thinking "we can do this". We couldn't, but I'll never forget that moment.

The low point was today. I had planned to be there for the induction ceremony, but things didn't work out. I should have at least went to San Diego, but that didn't even occur to me until yesterday. Doh.

Anyways, I have too many emotions about this whole thing for something as simple as a blog post. It's really weird to have the Tony Gwynn chapter of my life closed. Good tiimes.

Thanks Tony. And congratulations.

Oh, and by the way, screw you ESPN.com...this was the homepage earlier today:


No mention at all? WTF?

Here is Yahoo! Sports:



Congratulations Yahoo! Sports, for being my new sports news website of record.

Ron Paul Test

Hmmm. Let's see if it works.

Ron Paul.

Ron Paul.

Ron Paul?

RON PAUL!.

Mitt Romney channels Ted Stevens

In case you don't already know, the internet is a series of tubes, not a truck, and apparently, YouTube is MySpace.

"YouTube is a website that allows kids to network with one another and make friends and contact each other," Romney explained. "YouTube looked to see if they had any convicted sex offenders on their web site. They had 29,000."

Un, no Mitt, that would be MySpace.

Hey America, how about only taking seriously those candidates who know what the fuck they are talking about?

Will there ever not be a traffic jam on i-80 towards SF?

Things I don't understand

An ATM at a northwest Louisiana truck stop gave out $20 bills instead of $5 bills, but authorities say they know who used it and plan to pursue the extra $7,000 the machine spit out.

There are ATM's that spit out $5 bills? WHERE WAS THIS WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE?!?!

Costco Observation #2: Maybe I'm not that cheap.

I am cheap.

This is not a secret.

I cut coupons, abuse my Entertainment book, never pay retail, and am in general just a cheap bastard. The ladies LOVE that, let me tell ya.

I also make it a point to eat the samples at Costco. I am not embarrassed by this.

But there is a point at which I draw the line: I do NOT wait for Costco samples.

I used to think maybe I was in the upper echelon of cheap asses, but, as I look at the mob of people surrounding the kiosk, waiting for their bite size portion of Kirkland Signature Meat Lasagna to finish cooking, I begin to doubt that I am the cheapest of the cheap. And as I see the same scene repeated at every kiosk, I KNOW that.

Muffins & Bumper Stickers

It's really sad to be in your thirties and not know some of the basic things in life. Yet on a daily basis, that's the position I find myself in. So I have a couple of questions:

1) Is there a trick to eating a muffin which doesn't involve it breaking into a billion pieces and ending up all over my desk and my clothes? I swear it's like I'm playing Asteroids, every piece i try to eat breaks into two or more smaller pieces. Then those pieces break up. After a while I may as well roll up a dollar bill and snort the goddamned muffin dust. There must be a better way.

2) How the hell do you put a bumper sticker on properly to avoid the air bubbles? I guess I'm just not patient enough in my bumper-sticker-putting-on ways, I just slap that puppy on and then step back and think how shitty it looks with all these freaking air bubbles. What is the proper bumper-sticker-putting on method?

Conspiracy Theory #54: Diet Dr. Pepper

FACT:

Whenever the subject of best tasting diet sodas comes up (which, in my drab life, is more often than you'd think), Diet Dr. Pepper is routinely mentioned more than any other drink, including Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi.

Then why, why I ask, is Diet Dr. Pepper hardly ever available at a soda fountain or in a restaraunt, hmmm?

What's really going on?

Wait, sometimes life can go smoothly?

Got a new car, needed to get it smogged and pay taxes at the DMV. So of course I set aside the whole day to accomplish this. That's how my life goes. As NoFX says: If you need to find me, just go to the end of the longest line.

Smog took no more than 10 minutes. And I passed easily (rare for my cars).

DMV took about 10 minutes.

Is this how everyone else's life normally works? Because it's so far out of the normal for me, that I question if I'm even awake right now.

Generation Chickenhawk

I saw this at Sadly, No! It highlights the best way to debate a Republican: ask them a simple question and then just let 'em talk.

The Poor Man

Why is The Poor Man Institute the best political blog there is?

What you [Jonah Goldberg] mean by “ruthlessness” is pretty much the Al Davis philosophy of football - ‘Just Win, Baby!‘ - a philosophy which carried the Raiders to the worst record in the NFL last year. “If losing, try more winning” is perfectly sound advice, as far as it goes, but it’s not really a strategy, and it remains resolutely not a strategy even if - for whatever reason - you decide to call it “ruthlessness”. The proper English description of this sort of advice is not “ruthless”, and it is certainly not “serious” - it is “banal”. 2-14 banal, to be precise, and there ain’t no first-round draft picks in war.

That's why. Waiting between posts can sometimes take a week, but it's almost always worth it.

Costco Observation

Why, when I go to Costco and make the rounds eating the free samples do I feel obligated to stand there and pretend I'm interested in buying the product? I pick it up, examine the ingredients, sometimes even ask where they are located, knowing that I have no intention of buying. I'm guessing the people making the samples could give a crap if I buy or not, yet there I am, putting on a big production of how interested I am in the frozen Shu Mai, like somehow my interest validates their self-worth.

Am I the only one who does this?

Mixtape Podcast #1

I like making mixtapes (technically "mixcd's", but, um, no), so I figured I'd start sharing them here for anyone who's interested. I basically joined all the files together into one big file, so in the true spirit of mixtapes, there shall be no skipping! Just click here to download...it should easily fit onto a single CD if you'd like it for your car or whatever. Or you can just stream it by pressing play below. You'll hate it either way.

Did you know that Alameda is an island?



Track List:

Supporting The Troops

Sen. Jim Webb offered the following amendment to the 2008 defense authorization bill.

No unit or member of the Armed Forces specified in paragraph (2) may be deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom unless the period between the deployment of the unit or member is equal to or longer than the period of such previous deployment.

Currently, if you're in the National Guard or Reserves, 15 months of Iraq duty is rewarded with seven to eight month home before being sent back. Webb's amendment would mean you serve 15 month in Iraq, you get at least 15 months at home.

Gee, I wonder how the Patriotic Republicans would react to this?

Oh, of course, they killed it.

Bastards.

Federalized Medicine

I'm listening to Bush talk about health care, and he keeps warning of the evils of "Federalized" health care. Um, hello, George, you're supposed to scare us with "socialized medicine" or "national health care". Did Michael Moore ruin those terms for you? Perhaps after seeing Sicko, Americans aren't quite as petrified of "socialized medicine", so they're trying a new term out to scare us. "Federalized medicine"? Yeah, not that scary. Good luck with that.

Your pundits at work

Pat Buchanan on the McLaughlin Group, 07/6/07:

They're egalitarian countries. They have moved further away from the great institution of hierarchy and patriarchy, the traditional family, where the father is the head of the family.
...

The rise of women to power in a civilization is very often the mark of its decline.

MSNBC (and other companies) pay this jackass a lot of money to analyze issues. Gotta love that liberal bias.

Oh, wait, haha, later he says:

I like the idea of the way some of us grew up. When you went to high school, you went with boys. And when you went to college, you went with men, and that you are different.

Ah. now it all makes sense.

Why Does MLB Hate Me?

Holy God. The one thing that could make me root against the Padres making the playoffs:

The July date will mark the earliest launch ever for a postseason MLB campaign. The campaign, entitled "There's Only One October," and featuring actor/comedian Dane Cook will highlight some of baseball's memorable postseason moments, while showcasing today's teams and most promising players in their quest for October greatness. The TV spots will provide a timely narrative of key stories which unfold during the regular season and their impact on shaping the 2007 postseason.

Have I mentioned how much I hate Dane Cook? Have I? I guess I have.

Extra Innings

Via Deadspin.

It's now time to discuss universal differences between men and their girlfriends regarding extra innings. When the game spills into the 10th inning, guys are usually excited that they are watching extra baseball for free. The girlfriends, meanwhile, are just ticked off that they don't get to go home yet. "I'm cold, I'm tired, and this is stupid." So the guy usually has to play the guessing game: "Okay, baby, if they don't score this inning, then we'll go home."

Pretty much.

Captain Morgan, The Jetblue Pooper

So last week I flew to Long Beach to pick up a car I bought on eBay. This post is not about my new yuppiemobile, but the flight down.

It was my first time flying Jetblue, and I was pretty impressed. More legroom than I've ever had on a flight, I got to watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report on the built in TV's, and even the snacks (come sort of blue potato chip) were damn yummy. Oh, and they give you the whole can of soda, not that 1/3 cup thing Southwest gives you.

Okay, so Jetblue, thumbs up. Fellow passengers, however, thumbs down.

First of all, the flight from Sacramento to Long Beach is an hour. One hour. 60 minutes. So, I make sure to use the bathroom before we leave. I figure if I do need to pee, I can hold it. I mean, jeez, the flight is one hour. Right after we took, it was almost time to land.

I was apparently alone in that thinking. The front bathroom was busy non-stop from the second the seatbelt light went off to when it went back on. At times the line was two deep.

So while I'm contemplating what the hell is going on, I keep hearing this awful snorting behind me. Not snoring, and not sniffling and whatnot due to illness. I'm talking full-on I've-been-snorting-coke-for-15-years type snorting. I have no idea if this dude was actually a coke-head, I'm just trying to give you a frame of reference. So, yeah, that's pretty disgusting.

But then the dude gets up to, guess what? Use the bathroom. Oh, and he's wearing a disgusting fucking tank top. So he goes in, and around the time a normal person would be coming out....he's still in there. So, now there's a woman waiting to use the facilities. Eventually, he comes out, she goes in...AND COMES RIGHT THE FUCK BACK OUT. Like a superball or something. She looks disgusted, goes and talks to the attendants. One of the attendants goes into the bathroom, COMES RIGHT BACK OUT, and actually says, "Oh my God, that's sooo bad!" This incites a bout of laughter between the attendants. One heads back to the bathroom with her hand over her mouth and some sort of industrial Lysol. She goes to town in there, the sound of aerosol fills the air.

Now, keep in mind, I'm in the second row, and the Dude is in the third row, so A) No one has any doubt as to what happened and who caused it, and B) we can hear and see all this rigmarole over the incident. There are no secrets at 35,000 feet.

Meanwhile the disgusting snorting continues until we land. The Tank-Topped One proceeds to practically push people out of the way. Where is he in such a rush to go? To the baggage claim. Because everyone know that if you get there first, your luggage comes out first. Right. So of course we have to wait, at which point I decide I must photograph this dude for you, loyal reader. Ladies and gentleman, I bring you, the face of America:

(Mark has dubbed him Captain Morgan. Ahahahahaha)

Big Love

I started watching Season Two of Big Love on HBO, and whaddaknow, more product placement:



Now, of course, Team Of Rivals appearance can simply be explained as symbolism regarding how Bill's three wives divergent viewpoints end up being a strength (in his eyes at least) for their plural marriage.

But again, it gives me an icky feeling. The same thing happened regularly on the Sopranos, and now I'm sure I'll be looking for it in other HBO shows. I may be reaching here, but is HBO getting paid for this placement? Would this have anything to do with why the excellent Deadwood and Rome are still not on the air? I imagine it would be rather difficult to place a product in 1870's Montana or ancient Rome, unless you're selling gold mining equipment or chariots.

A Bunch Of Bombs In The Air...

Happy 4th, everyone! To celebrate, I bring you the national anthem, as sung by track and field legend Carl Lewis...

<div><a href="http://minorcrisis.net/files/carllewis.mp3">carllewis.mp3</a></div>

Hosted by minorcrisis.net

Yowzers. Let's try that again. Enrico Palazzo, help us out...



Hmmm. Not gonna cut it. Police officer, help us out...



Wait, wait, that's not right. Rosanne?



Ladies, and gentleman, we are having technical difficulties, please bear with us. Okay, I think I have it fixed. Skater lady, break a leg...



Jesus, man, I think a crackhead could literally sing better than all y'all.

I T M F A

Seriously, after yesterday, what more does he have to do before we ITMFA? Eat live puppies?

If he commuted Paris Hilton's sentence, there would be rioting in the god damned streets.

Hey George here are some ideas for your next bout of obstruction of justice er I mean compassionate conservatism:

Mandy Martinson — 15 years for helping her boyfriend count his drug-dealing money.

DeJarion Echols — 20 years for selling a small amount of crack and owning a gun, causing Reagan-appointed federal judge Walter S. Smith, Jr. to say, “This is one of those situations where I’d like to see a congressman sitting before me.”

Weldon Angelos — 55 years for minor marijuana and gun charges, causing the George W. Bush-appointed judge Paul Cassell, previously best known for pressing the courts to overturn the Miranda decision, to call the mandatory sentence in this case “unjust, cruel, and even irrational.”

Anthea Harris — 15 years when members of her husband’s drug ring received sentence reductions to testify against her, although she had not been directly involved in the business.

And of course, what about Genarlow Wilson, who got 10 years for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.

Fuck Scooter Libby.

Fuck George W. Bush.

Happy Bring 'Em On Day!

The magic words were spoken four years ago today.

Move On

Over the past few years, you often hear some Republican try to tarnish a Democrat as belonging to the "MoveOn.org crowd". Somehow, over time, MoveOn.org became synonomous with communist. It makes me crazy. Why?

Atrios explains:

The mainstream media has never understood Move On, or at least pretended not to. This is basically a group which formed and gained incredible support around the notion that Clinton should be censured, not impeached, which the wise old men of Washington thought was crazy until the sainted senator from Connecticut proposed it. Then they had the crazy idea that the Iraq war might not be such a hot idea.

Yup.