I could not let this go without saying, in a big way, WTF?!?!?

Peter King, Sports Illustrated's lead NFL writer, thinks that Derek Jeter is the best baseball player he has ever seen. Wow.

That is just about the dumbest thing anyone has said since Denise Richards said "I do" to Mr. Charlie Sheen. I mean, do they not proofread their stuff now at si.com? Did King, who is, in fact, a Red Sox fan (or so he claims.....), write this piece of crap in a sleepwalking episode or a drunken stupor or something? I mean, I know that the SI writers are responsible for a LOT of content each week, but hey, it's his offseason fer chris' sakes. Think, THEN type.

One could argue that Jeter is a terrific, HOF bound shortstop who has been the heart and soul of one of the Yankee franchises best title runs any day of the week. One could claim (not prove but claim) that he is the definition of "a clutch player", the very existance of which is a load of bunk. But the day you argue he is anywhere near the top of the pecking order of "best" players in the game is the day you've jumped the shark. Firejoemorgan wrote a good piece on the King article: the numbers and anyone's eyeballs simply don't lie.

The worst/funniest part? In the very same article, King predicts the Patriots getting to Super Bowl XLI. Now THAT I know that is a statement/prediction we can put in the bank.....right?

"The place where valor sleeps".

President Bush paid tribute today at Arlington National Cemetary to all those who have died in service to our country, giving special consideration to the men and women killed in action after 9/11.

Since the President first called our armed forces into battle following the terrorist attacks of 2001 he has been heavily criticized in quite a few circles for not attending a single individual funeral service for US personnel KIA in Iraq or Afghanistan. And since I am no fan of President Bush this was something that, initially, I latched on to and said "Ahah! Another example of his disregard for human life!" It's not that simple, though.

Looking back at how other wartime Presidents handled this extremely touchy issue reveals a disparity in how Chief Executives handled this part of their job. Here is an excellent look, written in 2004, on the manner.

Lyndon Johnson attended more than a few services for soldiers killed in Vietnam, some of whom he knew personally, and took the loss of life very hard. This almost certainly (both his emotional devastation at the loss of US lives as well as his sense that the war could not be won) contributed to his decision not to seek re-election. Woodrow Wilson, known as an emotional man, also took services hard for soldiers killed in the First World War, and probably would have been best advised to not attend any, if the example cited by Mr. Baker above is representative.

Franklin Roosevelt did not attend individual services during WWII, but, as with all Presidents, attended general memorial services. The same with Truman, Clinton, and Bush I.

So it's clear that President Bush is not making any changes to White House protocal in his decision to stear clear of armed forces funerals. While it is one thing to disagree with his policies, his actions, his words, his choice of personnel and any number of other issues, he should not be criticized for something simply because it is easy to do so.

Third Rule when dealing with Bus Uncle: Bus Uncle should get a damn copyright on Bus Uncle's tirade/arietta!!

.....or you won't get in on any o' this.....

I promise, no more Bus Uncle. Starting....................now!

Memorial Day 2006

The War in Iraq, so far.

1) Total US military deaths as of 5/28/06: 2,688

2) Total US military wounded as of April '06: 17,869

3) Total contractor deaths so far: 332

4) Estimated Iraqi police and military deaths so far: 4,725

5) Iraqi civilian deaths so far: estimated at 10,000 pre 2006, unknown number killed since 1/1/06.



The President's current approval ratings.

see here and compared with recentend of term Presidents

"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war." - Donald Rumsfeld - II

Why? Because of this, thisand this....and so many other reasons.

Carl Monday: Cleveland's Own Newshound.....Crimefighter......S--thead.

Take it away, Deadspin. I may not be a "combat veteran", and may not have a moustache either, but I still don't like you, Carl Monday!

Carl Monday, you see, is kind of a big deal: tackling the big stories, facing the big issues.

And as far as catching young men playing with themselves on public property, well, I don't think it's an accident that Carl Monday misspelled a certain word in this sentence on his blog: "When asked what we were dong there we told them...and asked for their reaction.".

Freudian slip, eh, Carl Monday?

Second Rule when dealing with the Bus Uncle: Do Not Arrest the Bus Uncle!

Though this one is not a sure thing since he doesn't actually appear in the video, apparently the Bus Uncle was arrested after his rant. What kind of a world do we live in when you can't scream six minutes of obscenities at a perfect stranger who asked you to keep your loud "phone voice" down to a reasonable level? The Bus Uncle would most likely STILL be yelling at the poor guy....except for an incoming call.

First Rule when dealing with the Bus Uncle: Don't touch the Bus Uncle!

TouTube again: You think you have pressure? I have pressure! This is Chinese swear words!

Does WalMart give management seminars in Bristol, Connecticut?: ESPN, the 800 lb. gorilla with attitude

Sure I love to watch three college bball games at once (ESPN,ESPN2, and ESPN Classic....four if I had access to ESPNU) during the frozen winter months. Having Chris Berman do his schtick has always been pretty funny. And Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick made SportsCenter into an psuedo art form during their run several years back. But enough is enough. Not that this is a news flash or anything, but ESPN has become something they themselves used to mock. Kind of like that one funny Wayans brother, a veteran of the groundbreaking "In Living Color" who now does some awful sitcom on ABC.

The sports world is vastly different now than a quarter century ago, and a large part of that can be credited to 24 hour cable channels like ESPN (if you consider the changes to be "good"). Today, we get multiple games on at the same time, streaming real scores at the bottom of the screen (which actually kinda irritate me, but I understand their purpose....mostly for betters). It is the Information Age, and to the forefront of the sports segment of that world has risen a channel that, in the beginning, rebroadcast Australian Rules Football tapes because they were cheap and featured real live blood, as well as pro wrestling (same deal: cheap, real live blood). Anything to fill the day. As years went by and financial backers realized schmoes (like me...most especially like me...) would watch this stuff, ESPN was able to acquire rights to NCAA bball and fball as well as some minor sports that had an affluent following, like tennis. Eventually Bristol landed their Great White Whale: the NFL. Once Americas's Sport was part of the family, the sky was the limit. And the network was a cash cow, being gobbled up by Disney in 1984.

During the decade of the 80s, due to its jam packed content, consumers began to demand that their cable provider include ESPN in its basic lineup, and not part of any separate, fee based package. Disney and ESPN, knowing that sports fans were willing to pay just about anything to watch Sunday Night NFL games and a plethora of Saturday college football contests, kept charging the nation's cable providers more and more fees per subscriber per month...and more...and more. Eventually, ESPN and its family of channels made up a large percentage of just about every consumer's cable bill, whether you watch it for 100 hours a month, or 0.

Today, ESPN has become a victim to its own success. As part of a huge multinational corporation run by suits (sorry Mickey, but Disney is as cutthroat a company as there is), with no thought given to substance or style the spark has died out of a once innovative company. And as this link shows (this one too), they've completely lost their sense of humor, if not the absurd as well.

To summarize, the very married Chris Berman was witnessed some years prior by a Deadspin reader (who was making an unsuccessful go of it with the babe in question at the time) picking up a hot, leather outfitted, cable groupie at a bar with simply a glance, a nod, and the line "You're with me, leather...". Deadspin.com had been trying to get someone on the network to use the line, in any context, at any hour. And apparently Neil Everett took the bait....and has been suspended for a week.

The King is dead.....

Edit 5/26/06: Um....apparently I jumped the gun a bit. Neil Everett has NOT been suspended, as of friday morning. Damn it, what a bummer when you found out your gloating and self righteousness is based on a false rumor. Damn it.

YouTube is Awesome! The NHL playoffs are Awesome!

If you're a sports fan and this doesn't give you a chill up your spine...well....you're not a real sports fan. Sorry, but you're just not.

Remember when the Bruins had that same kind of atmosphere come every spring in the Garden, back in the late 70s and 80s (I was too young for the Cup glory days)? Even though the #$%@*!@# Habs ALWAYS got the last laugh, the boys from Beantown werealwaysthisclose. "Too many men on the ice?" To this very day, none of the members of that team will give up the guy who messed up. Still, those Bruins teams were the epitome of hard work and all about giving the fans their dollar's worth. They WERE "The Lunch Pail A.C", and they were loved.

Growing up in southern NH in the late 70s and early 80s Bourque, Terry O, Cheesy, and Nifty were Gods. The fro-ed Wensink once tried to take on an entire team in a fight, and no one was willing to give him a go (can't remember the team, though but I'm sure there's a bootleg VHS tape floating around on one of the NHL fight sites that has it....). And Stan Jonathan was a mini-Incredible Hulk. Ratelle, Park (even if they were tainted by being ex-NYR's), Gilbert's one magical spring....hell, even Mike Milbury was a hell of a player. And he could certainly beat the crap outta ya with yer own shoe, asshole!

Good times..... Now that Harry ("He traded Bobby Orr") Sinden is into full on dementia, it just sucks to be a B's fan. Just totally sucks. Maybe Don Cherry could be rehired?

But as I said at the top, in what other athletic event does the singing of the National Anthems cause you to tear up? We're missing NHL playoff hockey here in New England, and have been for a while.

I am a bit concerned about, well, everything....

1) This is, as far as I can tell, a real paper and a real headline. No comment necessary, except I just cancelled my two week summer vaca to beautiful Marengo County, Alabama. I hear they don't treat Yankees that well, either. Or blacks, gays, immigrants....um, pretty much everybody but fifteenth generation "southern gentlemen" (which is the most full of shit phrase ever coined imo, btw). Thanks to The Airing of Grievances for this one.

2) Some people don't have much of a sense of humor. In fact, some have none at all. That is why the internet was invented, I suppose. So we could all find out that some people have no sense of humor. Well, that and porn.

And MySpace.

Vito is dead, murdered, whacked. Darn, I really thought that the New Jersey branch of La Cosa Nostra would welcome a gay male back with open arms, so to speak. Apparently so did poor Vito.

The guy could have spent the rest of his days in the warm embrace of the studly Johnnycakes, written that book on Marciano (or was it Graziano? Or neither?), fought fires with that all gay fire department, and basically had everything that a man could want. But no, he fooled himself into thinking he could come back to the old life. And was beaten to death for it. That just goes to show that what your parents always told you (well, mine did anyway) is the truth: going antiquing in the White Mountains can get you killed.

Or something like that

4) This may be kicking someone when they are down, but what the heck, it's a slow day so far.

My favorite Springsteen quote: "Blind faith in your leaders, or anything, will get you killed."

Fav Britney Spears saying/political philosophy: "I just think we should trust our President in every decision he makes." As made famous in "Fahrenheit 911".

Poor Britney's Q score has fallen so very hard, so very fast from the beginning of the decade it is a bit shocking. Well, at least she was married to George Costanza for 55 hours.....what?.....different Jason Alexander? I knew that...I knew that. So that means KFed is IT? Damn. Good luck with aaaaall that Britney.

5) NH "hunter" dies in accident, elephants worldwide celebrate.

I didn't realize that killing elephants was considered "hunting" anywhere in the world. Hitting one with a bullet must be as hard as...well...I can't imagine it's that hard.

He did it! He did it! Bonds ties the Big Bam....

.....and the fan who catches it couldn't be......more excited......to sell the thing.........as soon as he @#$%&$% can.

The joylessness of Bonds pursuit of reminds me of Yaz struggling to get his 3,00th hit and 400th homer back about a quarter century ago for the Sox. Of course Yaz was absolutely beloved (at least by the end of his career) by Boston fans and the unfunness of the whole thing was that we all were desperate for him to get the hit/homer because he was at the end of the line and nowhere near his peak. There seemed to be a possibility that he woud NEVER get there. The Boston papers treated it kind of like the Bataan death march of record chases, since it took weeks and was agony for all. Not because everybody despised the man (like Bonds) but just the opposite: he was an all timer in the city of Boston. We hated to see him struggle.

Compare that with the negative reaction leading up to today by fans, fellow players, and media. The above link describes fans booing the announcement of Barry's historic bomb almost everywhere there was a game being played.

And as far as using any enhancements, anyone that ever saw Captain Carl with his shirt off KNEW that he was not exactly rigorous in his off field training, outside of a sixer and a pack o' smokes every evening; no steroids for him, that's for damn sure.

Okay Barry, you have your "record". Now please retire. Please.

The future's so bright I gotta wear shades....and a haz mat suit.

After quickly reading "The Oh, Really? Factor" today (a book much funnier that it's awkward title would have you believe) I decided to do a quick review of it for Amazon, just because it gave me some laughs. After posting the review, I scrolled down to see what others thought of it. And lo and behold, I hit what struck me as a the most twisted of all the reviews, by someone claiming to be a j student but who couldn't spell to save his ass. This is all the reviews he's done for Amazon (there is no personal info here, so it's not like I would ever have a clue if this is a real person or not. I'm hoping that this is a real dude though; makes me feel all tingly inside). I breathlessly await the next review.

Don't read books, it just leads to angst.

I am sitting here wondering why my blog has gone from an Arnold Schwarzenegger-like back and forth between "funny stuff" and more serious fare (also attempted by Vin Diesel to much less success) to a Woody Allen-esque "funny stuff" gone, all serious shit now and forever more type deal. And I don't really know why. Maybe having it rain non stop for two weeks, resulting in the flooding thoughout York County of Maine, NH, and northeastern Mass has darkened things a bit. Maybe I'm reading too much. Maybe I'm depressed about the state of the planet. Or maybe I'm just a cynical prick.

Random Thoughts II

1) Danny Almonte is married!
Almonte, the ex-Little League World Series strikeout artist from the Bronx who five years back turned out to be 14, 2 years older than was allowed by LL rules when he was mowing down terrified children in Williamsport, PA, is now officially hitched. The kicker is that the woman is 30 years old. Do you think the guy maybe lied about his age, or did his "fastball" speak for itself? Almonte is getting ready for the MLB draft in June, where he is expected to be taken somewhere in the middle rounds by a team that doesn't give a damn how old he is. Finally, his dream is about to come true....

Edit: this just in....Danny married an ex LL teammates MOM! Now that is a way to get young people interested in a sport that has steadily lost much of its popularity in the last two decades: that chance to get it on with a MILF!


2) Hot Damn! US aid to the continent of Africa arrives...in the form of an e-mail scam run by Nigerians.
Who was a big enough sucker to have fallen for this unbelievably obvious con? A Massachusetts Christian psychotherapist. Great article in last week's New Yorker about how greed, gullibility, dishonesty, greed, and a little bit of greed led this guy to lose $60K of his own money, plus participate in the skimming of several hundred thousand dollars from various US businesses via stolen checks that were cashed by Mr. Worley. A Christian counselor who not only is dumb enough to answer the e-mail in the first place, but greedy enough to time and again over an extended period continue to try to get his cash, dishonest enough to try to hide his expected windfall from the IRS, and stupid enough to participate in the writing of an article in The New Yorker that will be read by many thousands of people: this is a guy that I baaaaadly want as my psychotherapist, especially if I'm a Christian in need of moral guidance.......or not.

3) Letterman and Mary Cheney v. Leno and Scott McClellan
On last night's Late Show, Mary Cheney was on to push her new book (no link. just because...) and Letterman gave her an extended interview. She is a homosexual, as everybody knows, but she is also the offspring of the Vice President. I had never really heard her speak, and after listening to her be interviewed, I am quite sure that she is to the lesbian community what Andrew Sullivan is to the male homosexuals of the world: not much help. She is a Log Cabin Republican (maybe not an official member, but one just the same), which means she's an apologist for the right wing distaste for lower and middle classes, the invasion of Iraq and its resulting quagmire/civil war, and anything resembling progressive thought. Hard to blame her, since her father is Darth Vader, and she was born into it, but still......

In contrast..

This past week, Jay Leno had as a guest that noted jokester and "man about town" Scott McClellan. I did not see any of the interview since I find Leno about as much enjoyable as a second viewing of "Eyes Wide Shut" would be. But Jon Stewart ran some soundbites of McClellan pulling his "I can't talk about (insert any subject under the sun)" act. The question for me is "Why the hell is someone like McClellan doing on a so called entertainment show in the first place?" Leno's show has always been mostly for the humor impaired crowd anyway, so I suppose he didn't piss anyone off, but really, McClellan? As a friggin guest? Wow.....

4) The next time you, a middle class working stiff making $40K or so with a mortgage to meet and kids to feed, say something along the lines of "Those damn welfare frauds are bankrupting this country! My health care/retirement benefits/job security/etc. would be sooooo much better off without all the people living off the system!", that faint cackling sound you hear in the background is Karl Rove giggling, rubbing his hands together a la just about every Bond villian, and murmering "excellent...excellent...".

H.L. Hunt; Political Visionary(?) v. FDR; Father of the New Deal

The idea that a person's worth in society should be measured by the size of their wallet is, to say the very least, not a new one. I'm only going to go back as far as mid 20th century, and examine H.L. Hunt, noted Texas oilman, polygamist, writer, and McCarthyite. At the peak of his earning days, ol' H.L. was raking in about $1m a week in income from his oil wells and assorted other businesses. Things were so flush for Hunt that he sat down one day (well, it probably took more than a day...maybe a couple of weeks) and wrote a "utopian novel" titled Alpaca. I have not read the book so I cannot comment on how utterly awesome it probably is, but I do know that in Alpaca Hunt floated the idea that an individual's number of votes in a government election should be determined by the amount of taxes they pay.

Sounds good right? Makes perfect sense? To take an example, if I (I mean "when I") win Megabucks my income will skyrocket not just in the year I win all that cash but in future years when the interest and dividends from my savings will cause me to pay a shitload of taxes to the IRS. Shouldn't I get something back for all those M-1s, voting machines, and CIA funded lap dances at the Watergate that I have paid for with my hard earned winnings?

Well, maybe it's not such a good idea. The party in power likes to use "averages", not "means", when they make decisions and analyze things, or at least claim to, often without snickering. Take any of the tax cuts signed by President Bush during his reign: the spin coming from the right has always been that the "average" taxpayer does well with these cuts. But really, a better measure is always the mean. Because, to use a very tired and worn out example, if Bill Gates and three inmates in a federal penitentiary are in the same room together in that prison (yeah, I know: not bloody likely, but stay with me for a sec), their average income/net worth/ability to attract chicks like a goddamn NBA player is through the roof. But their mean would be in the crapper: $0 income, $0 net worth, and their mean ability to attract babes would depend on access to "prisonpenpals.com" or whatever damn site women and inmates go to for that kind of hookup.

To further go with this idea of the number of votes being determined by weighted average, let's take (with the approximate population of the entire U.S. being around 300M give or take a few hundred that the National Guard have bravely stopped at our border with Mexico in the last couple of days) the typical American earning on average $40K/yr. And let's take the average yearly income (I have no idea how much he pays in taxes and their is no legal way to find out, but this will do as an alternative) for Mr. Gates, who is safely back in Seattle after that nasty penitentiary episode: let's say $1B, just to lowball but still give the man his props. That means the Bill Gates would get 25,000 votes for each person who makes the average income in the U.S. Or to look at it another way, for each 1 vote Bill Gates gets, the average voter would be allowed to vote .00004 times. With rounding (and you know that they would round, the bastards), the average voter would get 0.0 votes, and Gates, Paul Allen, Dick Cheney, the Waltons and a handful of others would be the only people allowed to vote, Darn, I think with the math even President W. wouldn't make it to the "1 vote" threshhold, since by billionaire standards, well, he ain't no billionaire. As a benefit, think of how this would simplify the nationwide primaries every two years. Hell, instead of renting a jet and traveling the entire 50 states (for Presidential hopefuls), candidates could spend a week in New York, fly to Los Angeles and have half the eligible voters already meeted and greeted!

Now I know that nobody in power is talking about Hunt's ideas as if they are next on the Congressional agenda, but that's what most folks thought about our Social Security system until the last few years. This was before our tone-deaf President decided that with his landslide (landslide?....well, no one tell him about Ohio or he might flip out) re-election of 2004, he had acquired the political capital necessary to make big changes. And that meant "fixing" (really, destroying) the Social Security system that has served the nation so well since its inception as part of FDR's New Deal back in the 30's.

The manufactured "crisis" is covered throughly by Joe Conason in The Raw Deal; basically the Republican Party tried to scare the elderly, the gullible, or some combination of both into thinking that SS was going to be broke within a few years. That is not true and was never true. As far as the younger generation, being told that they could "control" their retirement savings through use of "personal accounts" (although the GOP went through several different nomenclatures for the accounts, each one trying to sound less scary than the last) sounded, well, awesome! The stock market always goes up...except for the last five or six years. And the fact that Wall Street would make many billions off of the fees charged to these accounts that would likely eat up most if not all earnings (you know....like a savings account at any bank in America or any mutual fund held by HR Block) was not brought up too often at the "town hall meetings" run by such trustworthy folks as Senator Santorum during the national debate.

Since the days of Goldwater, there has been a faction of the conservative movement that desires to basically eliminate the entire Social Security system; the attitude being that folks need to save up enough during their working years for their golden years. "Stand on yer own two feet" so to speak. And in the end, finally the nation did get to its collective feet. Not to endorse this massive scam to take away much needed income by the elderly, disabled, or survivors of both but instead to say "No way". "No goddamn way".

But as far as H.L. Hunt's strange schemes.....who know what lurks in the hearts of Republican men? Only Rove and Cheney know for sure.

"One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic": The New/Old Math via the Bush White House??

Stalin is responsible for the above quote, but I wonder how far society has developed from the middle decades of the 20th century, when tens of millions of soldiers and civilians were slaughtered in one way or another by the fascism of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union's twisted version of "communism".

United States military deaths suffered in the invasion of Iraq, through 5/18/06, are 2,454, with no end in sight. How many months (years?) will it be before the U.S. population stops seeing each American soldier's KIA announcement as a horrific waste of life and begins the process of hardening itself to the fact that, as Donald Rumsfeld has said, "death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war"? How long before we as a nation become almost completely immune (or "depressed", which requires a general apathy and lack of appropriate feelings and emotions in its victim) to our losses and to Iraq's, and instead turn our attention away whenever possible or convenient?

One hopeful quote comes from our own President In Chief, Mr. Bush: "Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear." Since our President seems to lack the irony gene, maybe someone someday will explain to him how these simple words give many people in the U.S. hope that our country will be restored to sanity as quickly as possible.

Cynical? Me? Noooo... Why would anyone be cynical about this???

The phrase "I could indict a ham sandwich", applying to district attorneys and coined in NYC was popularized in "The Bonfire of the Vanities". It's been around for a few decades. Well, here's more proof that the saying is still as valid as ever: Durham, NC DA Mike Nifong's decision to indict two Duke lacrosse players (fingered by an exotic dancer who had been hired to perform at a party the team was throwing as being responsible for a 30 minute rape and assault of her in a bathroom) is absolutely blowing up in his face and becoming not only a local, but a national embarressment.

The latest bombshell came out today. The defense attorneys for the two indicted players have been informed through discovery that the only DNA found on the woman accuser through a rape test was from a Durham man not involved with the lacrosse team, and not present at the party.

That's right, there is no DNA on the woman who described a horrific half hour ordeal that included being bitten, kicked, and sodomized with a broom from anyone who could have committed the crime she described to the police and still claims happens. How can there be no DNA? Well the answer is obvious: she made up the whole story about the rape in order to enact some type of revenge on the men for some disagreement that occurred at the party, possibly over money or the fact that the lacrosse players say they specifically requested "white" strippers.

Even if the players had worn condoms during the rape there would have been some sort of residual evidence found on the woman. There WAS, however DNA discovered on the woman's broken fingernail taken from a trash can in the bathroom and given to Durham police voluntarily by a member of the team the night of the incident. Of course, this means nothing since it came from a trashcan, which was likely teeming with the stuff, and it would have been strange if the broken fingernail had NOT contained some DNA of members of the lacrosse team/guys who lived at the home.

This is the website for Mike Nifong, the local DA responsible for the indictments for two young men. He was in the midst of a re-election campaign when the story broke. You can, according to the site, have DA Mike come to your home and speak if you like, though I bet he's kinda booked now, especially since he won the primary (only a small percentage of the county voters bothered to turn out and vote).

To me, these players appear to be innocent of everything on the night in question except for very poor decision making in hiring strippers for their party and the typical overconsumption of alcohol seen so often in college students, along with their share of responsibility for whatever drunken argument occurred at the beerbash that resulted in the dancer's getting so pissed off as to report a horrific crime to local cops that has sparked massive nationwide media attention.

The media attention is due largely to the toxic mixture of sexual assault, race, privileged jocks attending an elite private university and supposedly doing nasty, horrible things to a couple of exotic dancers, as well as the local DA being involved in a re-election campaign in a largely minority populated county in North Carolina and needing a scalp or two. Add it all up and there is plenty of blame to go around. First of all, it appears the two dancers have lied to police about an alleged rape and assault. Hopefully they will both be charged; both the woman claiming to be the victim as well as the other dancer who backed up the story to a large degree. The players certainly could have exercised much better judgement; though that may not be their strong suit as many of the young men had been charged with alcohol and public nuisance related misdemeanors in the past. Certainly the media was all over this case from the get go. They can smell ratings and increased circulation when an alleged crime involving so many juicy elements presents itself, facts and intuition be damned. And though the members of the local community who were so quick to believe the woman can hardly be blamed for their initial outrage, since the crime of rape is so heinous, once facts presented themselves casting doubt on the dancer's claims, it seemed as if much of the public still NEEDED to believe the woman's story due to long simmering tensions between Duke's privileged student body and the largely middle and lower class minority population of Durham: an African-American student at a local college was quoted as saying he hoped the lax players were put away whether or not they were guilty, simply as a means of enacting a bit of revenge against Duke for years of perceived slights against the local community.

Here's rundown on the entire affair from talkleft.com. Very depressing all the way around.

Purely random thoughts.....

1) Barry Bonds in news again...
It was inevitable that Barry Bonds massively oversized head would be hit by.....well, something noteworthy: a low flying jet was my biggest fear, but other contenders were a BART train, Russian satellite, weather balloon, some large type of bird of prey. Well, none of those have been pulverized via collision with BB's noggin. What DID occur this week was that Barry took out his early season frustrations on an innocent baseball during Giants batting practice. The poor ball (or "egg", as Crash Davis refers to 'em) never had a chance. Sure Barry went down to the ground in what looked liked obvious pain in an apparent attempt to garner sympathy from fans and media, but you and I know the truth: he relished picking on that pathetic excuse for a baseball and beating the living crap out of it. He's been doing it for years to other balls with lumber. Now he's trying to do the same with something even harder and more calloused. Poor, poor baseballs.

2) Do cats know what day of the week it is?
I have become convinced that my cat KNOWS when the weekend rolls around. Lately, on every Saturday or Sunday morning I spend about 2 hours cleaning my tiny apartment. It has become a ritual I've followed for several months now (prior to last winter I was cleaning the place every full moon or so, if that often). Nothing different goes on in this apartment to clue her in: I don't wake up any earlier or eat different food or really anything that I can think of. Hank just knows.

And Hank simply hates my cleaning tools of choice: any spray bottle such as 409 (I got her when she was less than a year old, so I assume that her prior owners must have been the type of folks to spray water on their cats when they do something "wrong", since I've never done anything like that to her), and of course, the dreaded vacuum cleaner, feared by all domestic animals. Now that Hank has figured out my schedule of cleaning the place on either of the weekend mornings, she hides under the bed after eating her breakfast, and stays there no matter what amount of cajoling I attempt to get her to come out. Of course, once I have finished vacuuming (this is always done last, as she well knows), she will slowly gather her wits and creep out from under the protective shield I sleep on top of to sniff around and make sure the coast is clear. And then she goes about her business of doing cat-like things: basically, that means sleeping, waking, then taking a nap, then going back to sleep once awakening from the nap. Also some licking, and a small amount of eating and drinking of water.

3) Whatever happened to Rent-A-Wreck?
I happened to have had to rent a car this past week while my 8 year old Corolla POS was being worked on. I hate to complain about something that most UMC or even LMC folks don't give a second thought to: does the rental agency have to give you the nice shiny car with all the bells and whistles and 410 miles on it, as was the case with me? The brand new Ford Fusion with the 3.0 liter engine that doesn't hickup and whisper to me "watch it, bitch" whenever I am going up a steep hill on 95?

Do the car rental companies not have some old, rusty Novas or Malibus out back with about 125K miles on them, touches of rust everywhere, with an engine that sounds like a Cessna taking off? The reason I am asking (or rather, complaining) is that I was SPOILED ROTTEN for five days! The sunroof, the intricate yet simple to use alarm system, the great stereo, the seat that adjusted to my rather large bum at the touch of a button. I was like George Costanza in a luxorious commode, and kept thinking to myself "so...this is how the other half lives...wow!". Once I got the dreaded call from the dealer that my car was finished and ready to be picked up I wept. Or at least felt like I should. Returning the keys to the Ford to the rental agency was like slicing off a limb, a rather shiny, useful and beloved limb. Like maybe one of my thumbs. It hurt bad.

Now that I have been back puttering around in my Corolla (the one with 142K miles, an engine fit for ride-on mower and that smells like dirty socks) I have almost forgetten what it was like to pass a slow moving vehicle without a second thought. Or to have to decide exactly what temperature I wanted the interior of the car to be heated/cooled to. Or to have a gas tank that will hold more than 8 gallons of gas. Or the rush of wind that a sunroof allows. Yes, I've almost completely forgotten about all of that, and more.

The new "Mr. Irrelevant" is from the U. of Maine....(Insert smart ass comment here about Maine...irrelevant...ha ha ha).

Yes folks, the 2006 NFL Draft is now officially closed and in the books. For those of you who watched more than an hour combined of the proceedings on ESPN and ESPN2 over the weekend, well, good luck moving out of your mom's basement sometime in the next two or three decades (I can make this joke because it was only a few short years ago that I made such a move, and Mom, I really miss you.). Seriously, as a Patriots fan, I now know that the draft is just one piece in the puzzle of adding quality to a team's roster. It is not the be all and end all that the good folks at ESPN would have you believe, though I do like to look at Mel Kiper's hair every year and wonder: "What does he ask his barber to do when he goes in for a cut? Make me look like an extra from "Rebel Without a Cause?", with the snarl coming as a bonus. Bill Belichick has utilized free agency (as well as a few trades) just as much as drafting to add players who fit the so called Patriots "system", and I think that it has kinda worked out well for him, what with the three rings in five years and all.

But still, with ESPN, SI.com, et all beating all sports fans over the head with mock draft after mock draft after mock draft, it was all a bit much over the last month. There were actually a bunch of sites that tried to predict ALL SEVEN ROUNDS (no link because this being Monday, May 1st those sites seem to have deleted their mock drafts, hoping no one will know how wrong they were). This idea was definately hatched in somebody's mother's basement. Either that or at the end of a serious night of drinking: "Hey, what can we do to completely waste our time for the next two or three days, besides continue drinking? Or maybe they DID continue with the beer bongs and did up the seven round mockup whilst inebrieted. Either way, what was the point?

And the final player picked in this year's draft, a man who will forever be known as Mr. Irrelevant 2006 is a wide reciever from the U. of Maine named Kevin McMahan. No, he did not grow up here in our fair state (that would have been too much to ask), but seems to be a good prospect with decent speed though he has problems sep..oh hell, I don't know what I'm talking about: I thought Joey Harrington was going to be the next great Lions quarterback when he was picked third in 2003 after a terrific career at Oregon (Is that what they called wishful thinking: next great Lions QB? I mean, since Bobby Layne there aren't too many good choices). Anyway, congrats to Mr. McMahan and his family for "winning" this tremendous honor. Not that he has a snowball's chance in hell of doing much in the league (Jeremy Bloom, who is a 170 pound professional skier who hasn't touched a football for over two years was picked two rounds BEFORE McMahan).

The last Mr. Irrelevant to make news, well at least a little bit of news, was the Patriots own Marty Moore, a linebacker drafted out of the U. of Kentucky in 1994 who played for the team in Super Bowl XXXI. He saw action on special teams, and was actually someone I remember doing a pretty good job of it. Spent 9 years in the league. Where he is now only Google knows....