Yo Walt… Do It!!!

Steve Den Beste links to an article on MSNBC.com that quotes a teacher from my high school, Liz Morrison, in which she compares Osama Bin Laden to Pancho Villa. Steve thought that was goofy, but a reader points out a historical similarity in our response to both loonies’ attacks on civilians on our turf. Steve concedes the point in part. I’m not particularly well versed in the wars with Mexico, meaning that I saw The Alamo and that’s it, but at this point in the game it looks like the role of the Mexican government in that affair is more accurately analogous to Pakistan. And for the record, I never had a class with her. I was stoned most of my freshman and sophomore years so don’t recall who I had for history or social studies or whatever they called it, but I know I had Mrs. Tenholder (formerly Mrs. Bender, I think) for my last two years there. Maybe one of my sisters knew her. I gotta give the lady credit for creativity. I would have liked that class discussion.

Lt. Smash recommends an excellent column of Paul Gigot’s experiences travelling through Iraq with Paul Wolfowitz. It’s probably not what you’re used to hearing.

Cards signed a lefty starter Pedro Borbon from the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League. He did well there: 4-2 2.13 ERA 10:23 BB/K. Looks like he spent most of the season in the BP. Could he be this season’s Andy Benes?

I went to a concert tonight. I don’t really think music is all that great anymore. This band was pretty much like any other band, they played instruments and sang words. Except the bands I’m used to are weekend warriors, dudes with dayjobs who like to get together with the guys for a gig at some dive on Saturdays. The band I saw has a record deal, real fucking pros, called Jets to Brazil. But they sounded the same as any other garage badn. Glancing through their website, I dislike them even more.

KPLR, the St. Louis area WB network, usually broadcasts the Cards games on the weekends. Interpret usually as always except for this one. Today makes no sense, instead of showing the viewing audience, and those of us in the Cardinals’ network a baseball game, we got the Yahoo Serious vehicle Mr. Accidental. Tomorrow’s game is on Fox, thank Jeebus. It’s not like I’m gonna spend another sunny, breezy afternoon standing around on my patio with a beer in one hand and a mammoth spatula in the other, watching pork cook to perfection on a grill of quality far in excess of every other object I own. Doesn’t seem like such a bad day in retrospect.

I’ve got strange roommates. They think they’re hungry. They’re convinced they’re hungry. They open a can of tuna. They eat half. They suspect more hunger may be imminent. They leave the half can of tuna on the counter. It’s quarter to six. Fucking omelette, anyone?

I know, it’s uncool to complain so, but I had to get my camera out to take a picture of my ass a few posts down and didn’t want to feel that the effort was undue. And in case you’re wondering why I didn’t just embed the picture in this page, it’s because I had to take a dive into the hellish, squalid waters of dial-up networking when I fixed my mom’s computer a few weeks ago and realized how long it takes to load a page when you have about 3kbps of bandwidth to play with. It’s no fun for a spoiled monkey like me, what with my DSL and all. I also chucked the slick background that I worked so hard on to merge with the rest of my personal pages.

An interesting story: About five weeks ago, a bicycle appeared in my yard, leaning up against my house. I ignored it for a long while, then one day, running late for work, decided to give it a whirl. The bike had plastic clips that fit around the rider’s shoes, and if you tried to flip it over, the clips would scrape the ground and give off an unpleasant noise, thus coercing said rider into actually using these foot clip/death traps. I was said rider and ended up wrecking the bike. I figured the bike was light, and I’m so cool, I could hop off in transit and pick up the bike, impressing countless ladies. What happened when I tried to hop off is that my foot caught in the pedal clamp and the bike hopped off with me, tumbling me to the ground, resulting in a broken chain and a sweet new tattoo on my hip, commemorating my deep love of the classic Corman flick, “The Blob.” Today, the day after I rode it for the first time, it disappeared from the yard. Someone’s out to get me, in the most elaborate way.

Emily Jones is participating in the Blogathon today, so drop by often. She’ll be updating her blog at least once a half hour starting at 6:30 this morning until 6:00 tomorrow morning (Times Pacific). She’s trying to raise money for an AIDS charity.

You should know this already, but it’s confirmed that the Spawn Bin Hussein have ceased to be. The next question, of course, is who’s gonna be the first Westerner to bitch about it. Eugene Volokh is all over that shiznit. You can tell that he’s a remarkably bright dude, because it’s difficult for me to make the sorts of assumptions he makes leading through that post. The idea is that Chuck Schumer and some other folks that really hate the idea the the Neocon conspiracy might actually do some good for the world are citing this as an example of assassination, in violation of Ford’s executive order, which Bush considered rescinding, but has not done so in law. I’m no lawyer, but I figure if you give enemy combatants the opportunity to surrender and wait for them to attack you before returning fire, then that’s no assassination. It’s pretty clear that they would have been far more useful to us and the interim government as prisoners over worm food. That’s what a man might call restrained and provoked combat. One ace left in the deck. Sleep well, Ace of Spades.

If this report that Uday and Qusay were killed in a four hour battle with 200 coalition soldiers is true, it makes you wonder… What the hell were they doing up in Mosul? It helps to explain why there was an ambush recently in that vicinity, well outside of the so-called Sunni triangle. If it’s an accurate report, then that is definitely very good news for all participants.

Update 7/27: I have my head way up my ass, as argued by Andrew. Can you really blame me though? The Paper of Record led me astray! Wouldn’t have been straightened out were it not for Donald Sensing.

My throat started acting up a week ago, and it’s only gotten worse, so I’m biting the bullet and seeing a doctor today. It’ll cost me $129 but I don’t think I can stand this anymore. It hurts to talk, breathe, drink, and eat. And I get a heck of a kick out of all four of those things. I watched the Cardinals game last night but didn’t see Jeff in the stands. I guess the Fox networks don’t scan the crowd for the visiting fans like KPLR does. Crappy game too, we lost in the 10th inning and Matty Mo might have broken his hand off a nice curveball turned come-backer against the third batter faced.

I rented Old School last week, it’s a fairly funny movie. I watched it twice and both times I kept getting caught up in where I’d seen the actress who plays Nicole, Ellen Pompeo. She’s super-attractive. I figured it out. She played Laura Kendrick in the really spooky Law and Order episode, Fools for Love, among others. That’s the one I remember. The drugged, raped, and murdered bodies of a pair of girls show up and it turns out that one of the girl’s sister had lured them to her place so that her boyfriend could drug and brutally rape them. The ADA McCoy had already cut a deal with her so she’d roll on her boyfriend, but as the trial proceeds, he comes to realize that she played more of a role in the attack than she’d been letting on. He then gets her to admit to enjoying raping her sister during her sentencing hearing while her parents cry in shock in the gallery. The judge is disgusted and rejects the plea agreement and throws the book at her. Her performance in that scene is eery, and it stuck with me. She’s a good actress.

My health hasn’t entirely repaired yet, most irritatingly. The Cardinals have a nice little stretch ahead of us, the toughest team we’ll play until August 8th is the Montreal Expos. San Diego and then the Pirates are up next. My brother conjectured yesterday that Cal Eldred would be the next pitcher moved into the rotation, something that I thought was a bad idea. Instead, Garrett Stephenson is being sent to the bullpen and Jeff Fasserro will make his way into the rotation. I like Stephenson quite a bit, he’s typically aggressive, works fast, and keeps the game winnable, but giving up 3 RBIs to Hideo Nomo (his first, second, and third of the season) last Thursday was pretty intolerable. Fasserro won’t do any better, but he’s not getting any work and pitched poorly in the first half. His voodoo was stellar in the second half when we acquired him last season, so maybe they’re trying to give him a kick in the pants, shake things up, and see if he responds similarly. And if Stephenson can have the sort of success that Simo’s having in the BP, then we’ll be in far better shape, with two legitimate longmen in the ‘pen to make up for a short-term decrease in rotation reliability.

I’ve been real sick the past few days, tonsils swollen up, sore throat, and a cough so bad that I actually busted a blood vessel in my left eyeball the other day. Now I look like half a pothead. I’m hoping to be fully repaired by tomorrow, but if I haven’t gotten anything decent posted by then, go look at pictures of this kid. Pretty terrifying. I found that at Something Awful.

It would be funny, if it weren’t so vile, but this isn’t satire. Truly remarkable. Try googling her, and see what you dredge up.

I scored a 200 on my first try at the flying cow game. Surprisingly fun, almost as good as spanking the monkey. And I think we all know how much I like doing that.

Lt Smash has a post listing all the military bloggers involved with OIF. Haven’t had a chance to read through the ones I’m unfamiliar with yet, but will definitely once I’m off work.

It’s not the East or the West Side, but the Dark Side.

Just did a little egosurfing. Google’s updated their search for “liam moran.” Natchrally this page is nummer one since my name is all over it, the self-centered bastard I am. But number two is a picture of me jumping out of an airplane, and #5 is the paper I was published with too long ago. It almost makes me look pretty darned cool, if ye ask me.